The Harvest of a Quiet Eye

The Harvest of a
Quiet Eye

Selected by Alan L Mackay

The Harvest of a Quiet Eye

The harvest of a quiet eye,

That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

From A Poet’s Epitaph
by William Wordsworth

The Harvest of a Quiet Eye

A Selection of Scientific Quotations
by Alan L Mackay

Edited by Maurice Ebison

With a Foreword by Sir Peter Medawar

The Institute of Physics
Bristol and London

Crane, Russak & Company, Inc.
New York

This selection and arrangement © 1977 The Institute of Physics

Published by The Institute of Physics

Techno House, Redcliffe Way, Bristol BS1 6NX, and

47 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8QX

ISBN 0-85498-031-8 hardcovers
ISBN 0-85498-039-3 paperback

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The harvest of a quiet eye: a selection of scientific quotations.
1. Mackay, Alan Lindsay 2. Ebison, Maurice
3. Institute of Physics
808.88 '2 PN6084.S/

Science — Quotations, maxims, etc.

Published in the United States by
Crane, Russak & Company, Inc.
347 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10017

ISBN 0-8448-1050-9 hardcovers
ISBN 0-8448-1414-8 paperback
LC 76-48396

Compiled by Alan Mackay
Edited by Maurice Ebison
Illustrated by John Taylor

First published 1977
Reprinted 1978
Reprinted 1981
Paperback edition 1981

Set in 9/11 and 10/12 Times New Roman and 6/7 Univers Medium
Printed in Great Britain by J W Arrowsmith Ltd, Bristol

Foreword

I was charmed and delighted by this collection of aphorisms and quo-
tations, and hope and expect that many others will be too. Most of them
will appeal to scholars generally — very few are for scientists alone, though
these few are well chosen (it is fun to read Le Chatelier’s theorem as it
was propounded by the master himself — 93 :3).

As is usual with compilations of this kind, some quotations or
aphorisms are so persuasive and so well put that one wishes one had said
them oneself; others are wrong-headed — even Hardy nods (70:8) — and
others still tell us more about their authors than about their subjects:
Hilaire Belloc (15:6) cannot have intended to make a public exhibition of
himself, but in one short passage he skilfully betrays a total incomprehen-
sion of the scientific process, based upon that archaic usage of the word
‘experiment’, according to which an experiment is an answer to the
question: ‘I wonder what would happen if?’ and again (41 :5) the showbiz
or cocktail party air of Salvador Dali’s comment on DNA makes other
quotations seem by comparison more profound than they really are.

The inclusion of a few graffiti was a stroke of genius; my own
favourite wall decoration is to be found in the Faculty Club of Rockefeller
University, a place where reputations are keenly debated and appraised: a
cartoon shows three or four eager scientists discussing the claim to fame
of, one presumes, Prometheus : ‘Sure, he discovered fire,’ the caption runs,
‘but what has he done sinceT

At first sight some of the entries strike the reader as irrelevant to
science or scientists, but on closer inspection they will be found either to
have a sting or to accord with a train of thought relevant to Dr Mackay’s
own personal selection of extracts — the labour of many years and clearly a
labour of love.

I propose to add one more epigram to this ostensibly irrelevant
category: in these days of cost-consciousness, when the funding of
research is being administered as if scientific research were a branch of the
retail trade, and when ‘pure science’ and those who practise it are coming
under an increasingly cynical scrutiny, it is as well to remember the
definition that Oscar Wilde puts into the mouth of Lord Darlington in
Lady Windermere’s Fan: a cynic is ‘a man who knows the price of every-
thing and the value of nothing.’

It is strange in any book of quotations not to come upon a great
spout of steamy spray from the man Logan Pearsall Smith described as
the great Leviathan of English letters, but this is because Dr Johnson did

viii Foreword

not often bask offshore of the New Atlantis, though when he did so, his
observations had a strength, sanity and gravity that will instantly
recommend them to the increasing number of younger scientists who are
deeply concerned to introduce a moral valuation into science and its
applications. In his Life of Milton, Johnson chides Milton (and incidentally
Cowley) for thinking of an academy in which the scholars should learn
astronomy, physics and chemistry in addition to the common run of school
subjects. Johnson did not approve of these schemes, for:

‘. . . the truth is that the knowledge of external nature and of the
sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, is not the great
or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for
action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the
first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and
wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and
with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove
by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are
virtues, and excellencies, of all times and of all places; we are
perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our
intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations
upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. Physical knowledge is of
such rare emergence, that one man may know another half his life
without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy;
but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.’

Sir Peter Medawar
Clinical Research Centre, Harrow

Preface

Scientists have often been reproached for their apparent unfamiliarity with
the rest of our cultural inheritance. Inasmuch as science represents one
way of dealing with the world, it does tend to separate its practitioners
from the rest. Being a scientist resembles membership of a religious order
and a scientist usually finds that he has more in common with a colleague
on the other side of the world than with his next-door neighbour. But as
Shakespeare said of the two cultures: ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a
Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the
same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and
summer, as a Christian is?' In this case the division was by religion rather
than by attitude to science.

Scientists do live in the real world and share in developing and
unifying its culture. Many scientists, especially biologists, are able to
communicate more widely than to their professional colleagues their sense
of wonder at the workings of nature and indeed, for a creative person, the
form of the scientific paper is so constrictive that another outlet for his
writing is necessary. This collection of quotations is intended to show the
wholeness of our culture by demonstrating that scientists contribute to the
humanities, and that from Chaucer to Auden, the great humanists have
also been concerned with science in all its aspects.

A quotation is a polished prefabricated unit of thought or discourse
which has many connotations and associations built in to it. It is thus like
the text for a sermon, serving as a point of departure for many lines of
thought. Each of us knows many thousands of words and can give, for
almost any word, a definition close to that to be found in a dictionary
Yet each one of us has only ever looked up perhaps ten per cent of all the
words he knows. We have learnt words by picking them up in their
contexts. Each transaction with a word polished it and defined its use and
meaning more exactly. Words are coupled into phrases which carry
complete thoughts, associations and meanings. We have the subjective
feeling, which probably reflects a genuine physical basis, that words are
stored in our brains in a vastly ramified network. Extraction of a
particular word stirs others and whole phrases and sentences follow.
Quotations are, in effect, thoughts embedded in memorable phraseology
and polished by use. They are large preformed elements and necessarily
combine deep structure (the ideas) with surface structure (the actual words
in which the ideas are caught). It is easy to incorporate them, like plug-in

x Preface

circuit boards, into one’s own thinking machine.

This is a work of pure plagiarism and I have gleaned items from
wherever I came upon them, finding texts sometimes corrupt and full
references usually lacking. I apologise for inadequacies and hope that
enthusiasts will correct any mistakes and will be stimulated to contribute
further entries for later editions. Not all entries in this selection will be
familiar to the average scientist, but as quotations are for use, it may help
those who write and speak about science to illustrate their material with
them and thus some of the less familiar may take root and propagate
themselves. Different people will be led along different pathways of
thought and some may be stimulated to seek further acquaintance with
authors new to them.

In a way the compilation of this book has long been inevitable,
because, in 1940, my classics master, S G Squires, required that each
pupil in his class should keep a notebook for quotations — I still have mine.
So each morning, while the British Empire crumbled, we learnt a new Latin
tag and were tested on them once a week. I had doubts of the value of the
Classics and even of Shakespeare, but the influence at that formative age
had its effect. At the same time the endless exposure to the Bible and the
Liturgy of the Church of England provided the essential basis for an
informed rationalism and a feeling for the cadences which underlie most of
English prose. From the same period, H C Palmer, my senior science
master, convinced me that science was interesting and important and set me
on a scientific career.

Later, as a prize for the first year examination in Natural Sciences in
Cambridge, which was unprecedently postponed because it had been fixed
for what turned out to be VE-day, I chose The Social Function of Science
by J D Bernal. This was my introduction to the works of the marvellous
group of encyclopaedists which included Bernal, Waddington, Needham,
Haldane, and many other less well known figures. This book was a
revelation as to how areas of life which had been disconnected actually
fitted together. Later still, after work in industry, I was able to join Bernal’s
crystallographic laboratory at Birkbeck College, London.

The years in which Bernal was active were immensely stimulating.
Besides the revolution in biology all kinds of social, scientific and political
movements had their base there and the decrepit buildings which housed
the laboratory were an important international and intercultural cross-
roads. Alas, in 1963, Bernal suffered a stroke and he passed his last years
tragically cut off by his own failing senses. Bernal’s example of the
excitement and wholeness of life remains an inspiration.

However, it is to my father, whom a book of poetry helped to carry
through the Great War, that I would wish to dedicate this selection.

Alan L Mackay

Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, London

Introduction

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of editing this selection has been that
the resulting book is so very different from the preconceived one that had
existed in my imagination. I had expected to be taken on an orderly walk
within a restricted field defined by a fairly narrow range of topics from
physics and philosophy. What I found instead was a fascinating ramble
through an exotic landscape of diverse interests.

In deciding which of the large number of quotations supplied by Dr
Mackay should appear in the book every quotation was matched against
the following criteria:

(if Does it stand in its own right in the sense that its meaning can be
understood independently of a reader having detailed knowledge of
the material from which it is derived?

(ii) Is it likely to encourage at least some readers to want to seek out
the source?

(iii) Would it provoke the ‘Ah!’ reaction, that supreme moment when
a flash of unsuspected insight occurs?

(iv) Is it attractive because of real merit or simply because it is
already well known?

It is our hope that each of the finally chosen quotations passes at least one
of these tests.

The extracts are arranged alphabetically by the name of the author.
Occasionally, where it has been helpful to add an explanatory note, this is
given within brackets below the quotation itself. Wherever possible the
extract is completed by a reference to the source of the quotation. In
certain cases the quotation is given first in its original language in italics
and is then followed immediately by a translation.

Few things are more irritating than to have only a part of a quotation
dodging about in one’s mind so elusively that one is unable to pin down
either the complete quotation or trace its source. Since no compiler or
editor would wish readers to suffer in this way an index of keywords and
catch phrases has been provided which should enable a half-remembered
quotation to be traced on most occasions. Against each item in the index
the number before the colon refers to the page on which the quotation is
to be found, while the number after the colon refers to the number of the
quotation on that page.

Expressions of gratitude to the professional editorial staff involved in
the production of a book are very common in Introductions. This does not
mean that they are not heartfelt. Dr Mackay and I know only a little of

xii Introduction

the expertise and labour that have been involved in securing copyright
agreements, in designing an attractive lay-out for the material and in
encouraging in a tactful way both compiler and editor. We are sincerely
grateful to all in the Institute’s Publishing Division who have been
involved with this book and in particular to Frances Fawkes, Neville
Hankins and Teresa Poole.

Maurice Ebison

The Institute of Physics, London

1

The Harvest of a Quiet Eye

Russell Lincoln Ackoff 1919—

1 Common sense . . . has the very curious property of being more correct
retrospectively than prospectively. It seems to me that one of the principal
criteria to be applied to successful science is that its results are almost
always obvious retrospectively ; unfortunately, they seldom are prospec-
tively. Common sense provides a kind of ultimate validation after science
has completed its work; it seldom anticipates what science is going to
discover.

Decision-making in National Science Policy 1968 (London: Churchill)

Henry Brooks Adams 1838-1918

2 The future of Thought, and therefore of History, lies in the hands of the
physicists, and . . . the future historian must seek his education in the world
of mathematical physics. A new generation must be brought up to think by
new methods, and if our historical departments in the Universities cannot
enter this next phase, the physical departments will have to assume this
task alone.

The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma 1919 (New York: Macmillan)

3 All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres.

[After viewing the Palace of Electricity at the 1900 Trocadero Exposition in Paris]

The Dynamo and the Virgin in The Education of Henry Adams 1918 (Boston, Mass: Houghton
Mifflin and New York: Heritage Press)

Ahmose the Scribe ca 1650 bc

4 In each of 7 houses there are 7 cats; each cat kills 7 mice; each mouse
would have eaten 7 hekat of grain. How much grain is saved by the cats?

[Presumably the origin of the Mother Goose rhyme: 'As I was going to St Ives . . .']
in The World of Mathematics ed J R Newman, 1956 (New York: Simon & Schuster)

5 Ways of investigating Nature and knowing all that exists, every mystery
. . . every secret.

[Title of the Rhind Papyrus (on Egyptian mathematics)]

in The World of Mathematics ed J R Newman, 1956 (New York: Simon & Schuster)

Mark Akenside 1721-1770

6 Give me to learn each secret cause;

Let number’s, figure’s motion’s laws
Revealed before me stand;

These to great Nature’s scene apply,

And round the Globe, and through the sky.

Disclose her working hand.

Hymn to Science in Works of the English Poets ed S Johnson, London, 1 779, vol 55

Alain [Emile Chartier] 1868-1951

7 There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who
hate them.

Alfonso X [King of Castile and Leon] 1221-1284

8 [On having the Ptolemaic system of astronomy explained to him] If the

2

Alfonso X [ King of Castile and Leon]

Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon Creation, 1 should
have recommended something simpler.

Attributed

Luis Alvarez 1911—

1 There is no democracy in physics. We can’t say that some second-rate guy
has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

in D S Greenberg The Politics of Pure Science 1967 (New York: New American Library) ® D S
Greenberg. 1 967

American Philosophical Society

2 .... It shall and may be lawful for the said Society by their proper officers,
at all times, whether in peace or war, to correspond with learned Societies,
as well as individual learned men, of any nation or country . . .

[In its charter of 1 780]

Poul Anderson 1 926—

3 I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you
looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

New Scientist 25 September 1 969

Anonymous

4 ... like the statistician who was drowned in a lake of average depth six
inches.

5 ‘Life is very strange’ said Jeremy. ‘Compared with what?’ replied the
spider.

in N Moss Men who play God (London: Gollancz)

6 ’Tis further from London to Highgate than from Highgate to London.

[An example of a non-commutative metric]

James Howell Proverbs ... 1 659

3 Anonymous

1 Being before the time, the astronomers are to be killed without respite;
and being behind the time, they are to be slain without reprieve.

Shu Ching (before 250 BC) in Nature 1970 225 894

2 I have seen the blacksmith at the mouth of his furnace, his fingers like the
skin of a crocodile: he smells worse than the roe of a fish. I have not seen
a blacksmith on a commission, a founder who goes on an embassy.

[Written by Egyptian satirist]

Greek Science ed B Farrington, 1963 (London: Pelican/Penguin)

3 An education enables you to earn more than an educator.

in Hans Gaffron Resistance to Knowledge 1970 (San Diego. Calif: Salk Institute)

4 Research demands involvement. It cannot be delegated very far.

On Research. A Collection of Quotations 1966 (Cambridge, Mass: A D Little)

5 First baseball umpire: ‘Balls and strikes, I call them as I sees them.’

Second umpire: ‘Balls and strikes, I call- them as they are.’

Third umpire: ‘Balls and strikes, they ain’t nothing until I call them.’

A Rapoport Strategy and Conscience 1969 (New York: Harper & Row)

6 Gnothi seauton.

Know thyself.

[From the Temple of Apollo at Delphi]

Pausanias 1 0.24.1 ; Juvenal 1 1 .27

7 God is not dead: He is alive and well and working on a much less ambi-
tious project.

[Graffito, London, 1975]

8 Half of the secret of resistance to disease is cleanliness; the other half is
dirtiness.

9 How many people work in your department? — About a quarter.

10 It is an established rule of the Royal Society . . . never to give their opinion,
as a Body, upon any subject, either of Nature or Art, that comes before
them.

Advertisement in each issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society up to the
1950s

1 1 Laws of Thermodynamics :

1. You cannot win.

2. You cannot break even.

3. You cannot get out of the game.

1 2 Magna opera domini exquisita in omnes voluntates eius.

The works of the Lord are great ; sought out of all those that have pleasure
therein.

[Over the gateways of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge]

4 Anonymous

1 A metallurgist is an expert who can look at a platinum blonde and tell
whether she is virgin metal or a common ore.

2 Nature requires five,

Custom allows seven,

Idleness takes nine.

And wickedness eleven.

[Hours in bed]

Mother Goose

3 Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu.

There is nothing in the mind that has not been previously in the senses.

[See J L Lowes The Road to Xanadu for an example of the images which went into Coleridge's
poem]

4 Part of the strength of science is that it has tended to attract individuals
who love knowledge and the creation of it. Just as important to the integ-
rity of science have been the unwritten rules of the game. These provide
recognition and approbation for work which is imaginative and accurate,
and apathy or criticism for the trivial or inaccurate .... Thus, it is the
communication process which is at the core of the vitality and integrity of
science .... The system of rewards and punishments tends to make honest,
vigorous, conscientious, hardworking scholars out of people who have
human tendencies of slothfulness and no more rectitude than the law re-
quires.

The Roots of Scientific Integrity. Editorial in Science 1963 139 3561

5 The Philosophy of Princes is to dive into the secrets of men, leaving the
secrets of nature to those that have spare time.

in George Herbert Jacula Prudentum 1659

6 Rest in peace. The mistake shall not be repeated.

[Cenotaph in Hiroshima]

Scientific American June 1968

7 Sis, I have found out that there is no Santa Claus, and when I’m a little
older, I’m going to look into this stork business, too.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1 972, Autumn, p89

8 So, he was a great teacher. But what did he publish?

[From an Israeli academic]

9 This stone commemorates the exploit of William Webb Ellis who, with a
fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first took the
ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of
the Rugby game, ad 1823.

[Perhaps also characteristic of the empirical English school of physics]

Rugby School, England

10 The Turks are not called ‘Turks’ for nothing.

[This kind of remark leads us to a consideration of names, descriptions and semantics]

5

Michael A Arbib

1 Twinkle, twinkle little star,

I don’t wonder what you are
For by spectroscopic ken
I know that you are hydrogen.

in D Bush Science and English Poetry 1950 (New York: Oxford UP)

2 What is matter? — Never mind.

What is mind? — It doesn’t matter.

3 When all else fails, read the instructions.

4 We know that the magnet loves the lodestone, but we do not know whether
the lodestone also loves the magnet or is attracted to it against its will.

[Arab physicist of the 12th century]

in D Gabor Inventing the Future (London: Seeker & Warburg)

Guillaume Apollinaire 1880-1918

5 [Of the Cubists] ... we who are constantly fighting along the frontiers of
the infinite and of the future.

Probably C Grey Cubist Aesthetic Theories 1953 (Baltimore. Md: Johns Hopkins Press)

[Saint] Thomas Aquinas ca 1225-1274

6 Practical sciences proceed by building up; theoretical sciences by resolving
into components.

Commentary on the Ethics I. 3

Arabian Proverb

7 Learning in old age is writing on sand but learning in youth is engraving
on stone.

Frangois Arago 1786-1853

8 Connaitre, decouvrir, communiquer — telle est la destinee d’un savant.

To get to know, to discover, to publish — this is the destiny of a scientist.

Michael A Arbib 1940-

9 In the beginning was the word

And by the mutations came the gene.

Towards a Theoretical Biology ed C H Waddington.
1969 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP)

6 Archimedes

Archimedes 287-212 bc

1 Archimedes to Eratosthenes greeting. . . . certain things first became clear
to me by a mechanical method, although they had to be demonstrated by
geometry afterwards because their investigation by the said method did not
furnish an actual demonstration. But it is of course easier, when we have
previously acquired, by the method, some knowledge of the questions, to
supply the proof than it is to find it without any previous knowledge.

The Method in The Works of Archimedes transl T L Heath, 1912 (London: Cambridge UP)

2 Eureka!

I have found !

Vitruvius Pollio De Architecture ix, 21 5

3 Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.

[On the lever]

Aristophanes ca 444-ca 380 bc

4 First listen, my friend, and then you may shriek and bluster.

Ecdesiazousae 588

5 Socrates: Suppose you are arrested for a debt,

We’ll say five talents, how will you contrive
To cancel at a stroke both debt and writ?

Strepsiades : I’ve hit the nail

That does the deed, and so you will confess.

Socrates: Out with it!

Strepsiades: Good chance but you have noted
A pretty toy, a trinket in the shops.

Which being rightly held produceth fire
From things combustible —

Socrates: A burning glass, vulgarly called —

Strepsiades: You are right; ’tis so.

Socrates: Proceed.

Strepsiades : Put the case now your whoreson bailiff comes.
Shows me his writ
— I, standing thus, d’ye mark me.

In the sun’s stream, measuring my distance, guide
My focus to a point upon his writ,

And off it goes in fumo !

The Clouds transl T Mitchell. 1911 (London: Dent)

Aristotle 384-322 bc

6 If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work
that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves ....
If the weavers’ shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be
no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the
lords.

Atheniensium Respub/ica transl F G Kenyon, 1920

7 Roger Ascham

1 If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature’s way.
Nichomachean Ethics 1099B. 23

If this is a straight line [showing his audience a straight line drawn by a
ruler], then it necessarily ensues that the sum of the angles of the triangle
is equal to two right angles; and conversely, if the sum is not equal to two
right angles, then neither is the triangle rectilinear.

Physic a

3 It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas
make their appearance in the world.

On the Heavens in T L Heath Manual of Creek Mathematics 1 931 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

4 Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for
material needs, one of those sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian
ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there
having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.

Mstaphysica 1-931 b

5 Speech is the representation of the mind, and writing is the representation
of speech.

De Interpretatione 1

6 The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

Metaphysica 1 045a 1 0

7 [Quoting Agathon] Chance is beloved of Art, and Art of Chance . . .

Scientific American August 1969

Neil A Armstrong 1930-

8 One small step for man, one big step for mankind.

[First words on stepping onto the Moon]

Nature 1 974 250 451

9 That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

[Official version]

Thomas Arnold 1795-1842

10 Rather than have Physical Science the principal thing in my son's mind, I
would rather have him think that the Sun went round the Earth, and that
the Stars were merely spangles set in a bright blue firmament.

Roger Ascham 1515-1568

1 1 Mark all mathematical heads which be wholly and only bent on these
sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others,
how unapt to serve the world.

in E G R Taylor Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuatt England 1 954 (London: Cambridge

8 [Lord] Eric Ashby

[Lord] Eric Ashby 1904-

1 The habit of apprehending a technology in its completeness: this is the
essence of technological humanism, and this is what we should expect
education in higher technology to achieve. I believe it could be achieved
by making specialist studies the core around which are grouped liberal
studies which are relevant to these specialist studies. But they must be
relevant; the path to culture should be through a man’s specialism, not
by-passing it .... A student who can weave his technology into the fabric
of society can claim to have a liberal education; a student who cannot
weave his technology into the fabric of society cannot claim even to be a
good technologist.

Technology and the Academics 1958 (London: Macmillan)

John Aubrey 1626-1697

2 ... ’twas held a strange presumption for a man to attempt improvement of

any knowledge whatsoever; they thought it not fit to be wiser than their
fathers and not good manners to be wisfer than their neighbours; and a
sin to search into the ways of nature.

in Michael Hunter John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning 1975 (London: Duckworth)

3 [Of Thomas Hobbes, in 1629] He was 40 years old before he looked on
geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman’s library,
Euclid’s Elements lay open, and ’twas the 47 El. libri I [Pythagoras’
Theorem]. He read the proposition. ‘By God,’ sayd he. (He would now
and then swear, by way of emphasis.) ‘By God,’ sayd he, ‘this is im-
possible:’ So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to
such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to
another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demon-
stratively convinced of that trueth. This made him in love with geometry.

Brief Lives ed 0 L Dick. 1960 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

Wystan Hugh Auden 1907-1973

4 But he would have us remember most of all
To be enthusiastic over the night

Not only for the sense of wonder

It alone has to offer, but also

Because it needs our love: for with sad eyes

Its delectable creatures look up and beg

Us dumbly to ask them to follow;

They are exiles who long for the future.

In Memory of Sigmund Freud 1951 (New Haven, Conn: Yale UP)

5 How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers,
and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a repu-
tation he does not deserve.

The Dyer's Hand 1 948 (London: Faber & Faber)

6 Love requires an Object,

But this varies so much,

9

Pierre Auger

Almost, I imagine.

Anything will do :

When I was a child, I
Loved a pumping-engine,

Thought it every bit as
Beautiful as you.

Heavy Date in Collected Shorter Poems. 1927-1957 1966 (London: Faber & Faber)

1 Of course, Behaviourism ‘works’. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense,
down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances,
and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

A Certain World 1970 (London: Faber & Faber)

2 Those who will not reason
Perish in the act :

Those who will not act
Perish for that reason.

in Shorts in Collected Shorter Poems. 1927-195 7 1966 (London: Faber & Faber)

3 Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon world affairs,

Nor with compliance
Take any test.

Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Under which lyre in Collected Poems ot W H Auden (London: Faber & Faber)

4 To the man-in-the-street, who, I’m sorry to say
Is a keen observer of life,

The word intellectual suggests right away
A man who’s untrue to his wife.

Note on Intellectuals in Shorts in Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957 1966 (London: Faber &
Faber)

5 Tomorrow, perhaps, the future: the research on fatigue

And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the
Octaves of radiation; . . .

Spain 1937 in Collected Poems of W H Auden (London: Faber & Faber)

6 When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate
who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays 1 962 (New York: Random House)

Pierre Auger 1 899-

7 Holophrase — multisyllabic words designating precisely a very complex
situation but entirely sui generis and not resolvable; that is, containing
neither roots nor affixes used elsewhere. The best known example is
mamihlapinatapai which in Tierra del Fuego designates the situation in
which two persons look at each other, each hoping to see the other under-

10

Pierre Auger

take an action which both wish for without being disposed to take the
initiative.

The Regime of Castes in the Populations of Ideas in Diogenes 1 958 22 42

Saint Augustine 354-430

1 Angelus non potest peccare, homo potest non peccare.

An angel cannot sin; a man can choose not to sin.

2 The good Christian should beware of mathematicians [astrologers], and all
those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the
mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit
and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

De Genesi ad Litteram book II, xviii, 37

3 If I am given a sign [formula], and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot
teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the sign teach me?

De Magistro ch X. 23

4 Nisi credideritis, non intelligitis.

If you don’t believe it, you won’t understand it.

De Libero Arbitrio

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 121-180

5 Everything that happens, happens as it should, and if you observe carefully,
you will find this to be so.

Meditations IV. 1 0

6 That which is not good for the bee-hive, cannot be good for the bees.

[Like General Motors and the USA]

Meditations IV, 49

7 The world is either the effect of cause or of chance. If the latter, it is a
world for all that, that is to say, it is a regular and beautiful structure.

Meditations IV, 22

Avicenna [Ibn Sina] 980-1037

8 Non turpe est medico, cum de rebus veneris loquitur, de delectatione mulieris
coeuntis: quoniam sunt ex causis, quibus pervenitur ad generationem.

Writing about erotics is a perfectly respectable function of medicine, and
about the way to make the woman enjoy sex; these are an important part
of reproductive physiology.

in Alex Comfort Sex in Society 1 963 (London: Duckworth)

Azerbaijani Proverb

9 Speak not about what you have read, but about what you have understood.

Azerbaijani Wall Poster

10 Without sanitary culture, there would be no culture at all.

[Seen on a banner outside the Academy of Sciences in Baku, 1 962]

1 1 Francis Bacon [Lord Verulam ]

Charles Babbage 1792-1871

1 Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.

2 Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases
at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in
this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of pro-
gress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest.
Capital thus checks its own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its
own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its
predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than
that which it immediately succeeds.

The Exposition ot 1851 1851 (London: Murray)

3 That the master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into
different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill and strength,
can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for
each process; whereas, if the whole work were executed by one workman,
that person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult, and
sufficient strength to execute the most laborious, of the various operations
.... When (from the peculiar nature of the produce of each manufactory)
the number of processes into which it is most advantageous to divide it is
ascertained, as well as the number of individuals to be employed, then all
other manufactories which do not employ a direct multiple of this number,
will produce the article at greater cost. This principle ought always to be
kept in view in great establishments, although it is quite impossible, even
with the best system of the division of labour, to carry it rigidly into
execution ....

On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers London 1 832

4 The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable
of being executed by machinery .... As soon as an Analytical Engine
exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science.

Passages from the Life of a Philosopher 1864 (London: Longman)

Gaston Bachelard 1884-1962

5 L' observation scientifique est toujours une observation polemique; elle con-
firme on infirme une these anterieure; un schema prealable, un plan d’observ-
at ion; elle montre en demon t rant ; elle hierarchise les apparences ; elle tran-
cende Vimmediat; elle reconst ruit le reel apres avoir reconstruit ses schemas.
A scientific observation is always a committed observation ; it confirms or
denies one’s preconceptions; one’s first ideas, one’s plan of observation; it
shows by demonstration ; it structures the phenomena ; it transcends what
is close at hand; it reconstructs the real after having reconstructed its
representation.

La nouvel 6sprit scientifique Introduction

Francis Bacon [Lord Verulam] 1561-1626

6 The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes, and the secret

12

Francis Bacon [Lord Verulam]

motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire,
to the effecting of all things possible.

New Atlantis 1 626

1 For man being the minister and interpreter of nature, acts and understands
so far as he has observed of the order, the works and mind of nature, and
can proceed no further; for no power is able to loose or break the chain
of causes, nor is nature to be conquered but by submission : whence those
twin intentions, human knowledge and human power, are really coincident ;
and the greatest hindrance to works is the ignorance of causes.

The Great Instauration Preface

2 He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the
greatest innovator.

On Innovations Essays

3 The human Intellect, in those things which have once pleased it (either
because they are generally received and believed, or because they suit the
taste), brings everything else to support and agree with them ; and though
the weight and number of contradictory instances be superior, still it either
overlooks or despises them, or gets rid of them by creating distinctions,
not without great and injurious prejudice, that the authority of these
previous conclusions may be maintained inviolate. And so he made a good
answer, who, when he was shown, hung up in a temple, the votive tablets
of those who had fulfilled their vows after escaping from shipwreck, and
was pressed with the question, ‘Did he not then recognize the will of the
gods?’ asked, in his turn, ‘But where are the pictures of those who have
perished, notwithstanding their vows?’ The same holds true of almost every
superstition — as astrology, dreams, omens, judgments, and the like —
wherein men, pleased with such vanities, attend to those events which are
fulfilments; but neglect and pass over the instances where they fail (though
this is much more frequently the case).

Novum Organum 1 620

4 It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries,
and these are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in printing,
gunpowder and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face
and state of things throughout the world, ... in so much that no empire,
no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human
affairs than these mechanical discoveries.

Novum Organum 1 620

5 Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.

For knowledge itself is power.

Religious Meditations, Of Heresies

6 Natura non nisi parendo vincitur.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Novum Organum 1 620

13 Arthur [Earl of] Balfour

1 Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact
man.

[Bacon maketh a fat man — graffito]

Of Studies Essay 50

2 Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.

Novum Organum 1 620

3 Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics subtile; natural
philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Of Studies Essay 50

4 The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.

Novum Organum 1 620

Roger Bacon 1220-1292

5 Et harum scientarum porta et clavis est Mathematica.

Mathematics is the door and the key to the sciences.

Opus Majus transl Robert Belle Burke. 1928 (Philadelphia. Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press)

6 For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge
of mathematics. For this is an assured fact in regard to celestial things,
since two important sciences of mathematics treat of them, namely theor-
etical astrology and practical astrology. The first . . . gives us definite infor-
mation as to the number of the heavens and of the stars, whose size can be
comprehended by means of instruments, and the shapes of all and their
magnitudes and distances from the earth, and thicknesses and number, and
greatness and smallness .... It likewise treats of the size and shape of the
habitable earth .... All this information is secured by means of instru-
ments suitable for these purposes, and by tables and by canons .... For
everything works through innate forces shown by lines, angles and figures.

Opus Majus transl Robert Belle Burke. 1928 (Philadelphia. Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press)

Walter Bagehot 1826-1877

7 You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberias, but the real tyranny is
the tyranny of your next-door neighbour. What espionage of despotism
comes to your door so effectively as the eye of the man who lives at your
door? Public opinion is a permeating influence. It requires us to think
other men’s thoughts, to speak other men’s words, to follow other men’s
habits.

The Works of Walter Bagehot 1889 (Hartford. Conn: Traveler's Insurance Co)

8 One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Physics and Politics in Collected Works ed N A F St J Stevas. 1965 (London: Economist)

Arthur [Earl of] Balfour 1848-1930

9 [Brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh] . . . science was the great instrument of
social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge
and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of

14 Arthur [Ear! of] Balfour

political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which
have marked the development of modern civilisation.

Decadence 1908 (London: Cambridge UP)

Walter William Rouse Ball 1850 1925

1 The manner of de Moivre’s death has a certain interest for psychologists.
Shortly before it, he declared that it was necessary for him to sleep some
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour longer each day than the preceding
one: the day after he had thus reached a total of something over twenty-
three hours he slept up to the limit of twenty-four hours, and then died in
his sleep.

[Abraham de Moivre 1667-1754]

History of Mathematics 1911 (London: Macmillan)

William Bateson 1861-1926

2 I would trust Shakespeare, but I would not trust a committee of Shakes-
peares.

[The geneticist]

in J K Brierley Biology and the Social Crisis 1967 (London: Heinemann Education)

Edmone-Pierre Chanvot de Beauchene 1748 -1824
3 Science seldom renders men amiable; women, never.

Maximes, reflexions et pens4es diverses

Stafford Beer 1926-

4 Absolutum obsoletum — if it works it’s out of date.

Brain of the Firm 1972 (London: Penguin)

15

[Enoch] Arnold Bennett

1 Man: ‘Hello, my boy. And what is your dog’s name?’

Boy: ‘I don't know. We call him Rover.’

New Scientist 3 October 1 974

2 Our institutions are failing because they are disobeying laws of effective
organisation which their administrators do not know about, to which indeed
their cultural mind is closed, because they contend that there exists and can
exist, no science competent to discover those laws.

Designing Freedom 1974 (Chichester: Wiley)

Belgian Notice

3 Ne parler pas au watt man.

Do not talk to the tram-driver.

[Thus immortalising James Watt]

Vissarion Grigorievich Belinskii 1811-1848

4 In science one must search for ideas. If there are no ideas then there is no
science. A knowledge of facts is only valuable in so far as facts conceal
ideas: facts without ideas clutter up the mind and the memory.

Sobranie sochinenii 1948 (Moscow: OGIZ)

Eric Temple Bell 1883-1960

5 The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco
which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think. This is the
hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry.

Hilaire Belloc 1870-1953

6 Anyone of common mental and physical health can practise scientific

research .... Anyone can try by patient experiment what happens if this
or that substance be mixed in this or that proportion with some other
under this or that condition. Anyone can vary the experiment in any
number of ways. He that hits in this fashion on something novel and of
use will have fame .... The fame will be the product of luck and industry.
It will not be the product of special talent.

Essays of a Catholic Layman in England 1 931 (London: Sheed & Ward)

Nikolai Vassilevich Belov 1 891—

7 [Obituary of J D Bernal] . . . like a true Irishman, his last enthusiasm was
for the laws of lawlessness.

[Bernal developed a geometrical theory of liquids]

Soviet Physics-Crystallography 1 972 17 208-9

[Enoch] Arnold Bennett 1867-1931

8 [Of Nature] The writing of it is considerably inferior to the matter of it ... .
I regard Nature as perhaps the most important weekly printed in English,
far more important than any political weekly.

Evening Standard 20 November 1 930

16 Henry Albert Bent

Henry Albert Bent 1926-

1 ... hell must be isothermal, for otherwise the resident engineers and
physical chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine
to run a refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any
desired temperature.

The Second Law 1965 (New York: Oxford UP)

2 The important point is not the bigness of Avogadro’s number (6 x 10 23
atoms/gatom] but the bigness of Avogadro.

[Avogadro consisted of some 10 27 atoms]

The Second Law 1965 (New York: Oxford UP)

Jeremy Bentham 1748 -1832

3 O Logic: born gatekeeper to the Temple of Science, victim of capricious
destiny: doomed hitherto to be the drudge of pedants: come to the aid of
thy master, Legislation.

Works ed J Browning, 1838-1843

Edmund Clerihew Bentley 1875-1956
4 Sir Humphrey Davy
Detested gravy.

He lived in the odium
Of having discovered Sodium.

Biography for Beginners 1925 (London: Werner Laurie)

Nicolas BerdiaefT 1874-1948

5 Les utopies apparaissent comme bien plus realisables qu'on ne le croyait
autrefois. Et nous nous trouvons actuellement devant une question bien
autrement angoissante : Comment eviter leur realisation definitive ?

Utopias now appear much more realizable than one used to think. We are
now faced with a very different new worry: How to prevent their realiz-
ation.

in Aldous Huxley Brave New World 1932 (London: Chatto & Windus)

Henri Bergson 1859-1941

6 L'univers . . . est une machine a faire des dieux.

The universe ... is a device for making deities.

Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion 1 932 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France)

John Desmond Bernal 1901-1971

7 All that glisters may not be gold, but at least it contains free electrons.

[But consider the Golden Scarab Beetle which has a metallic lustre without metal]

Lecture at Birkbeck College, University of London, 1960

8 But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very charac-
ter of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself
unnecessary.

Marx and Science 1952 (London: Lawrence & Wishart)

1 7 Jons Jacob von Berzelius [ Baron Berzelius ]

1 The greater the man the more he is soaked in the atmosphere of his time;
only thus can he get a wide enough grasp of it to be able to change sub-
stantially the pattern of knowledge and action.

Science in History 1954 (London: Watts)

2 In fact, we will have to give up taking things for granted, even the appar-
ently simple things. We have to learn to understand nature and not merely
to observe it and endure what it imposes on us. Stupidity, from being an
amiable individual defect, has become a social crime

The Origin of Life 1967 (London: Weidenfeld & Nic ex

3 It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in
their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible
proof.

The Origin of Life 1967 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

4 Life is a partial, continuous, progressive, multiform and conditionally
interactive self-realisation of the potentialities of atomic electron states.

The Origin of Life 1967 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Claude Bernard 1813-1878

5 La science n’admet pas les exceptions; sans cela il n’y aurait aucun deter-
minisme dans ia science, ou plutot il n’y aurait plus de science.

Science allows no exceptions; without this there would be no determinism
in science, or rather, there would be no science at all.

Lemons de pathologie experimental 1871

6 A modern poet has characterised the personality of art and the imper-
sonality of science as follows: art is I; science is we.

Introduction b Tbtude de ia mbdecine experimental 1865, I, 2.4, line 1742

Edward Bernard 17th Century

7 Books and experiments do well together, but separately they betray an
imperfection, for the illiterate is anticipated unwillingly by the labours of
the ancients, and the man of authors deceived by story instead of science
(1671).

in S J Rigaud Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century Oxford, 1841, vol 1

Jacques Bernouilli 1654-1705

8 We define the art of conjecture, or stochastic art, as the art of evaluating
as exactly as possible the probabilities of things, so that in our judgments
and actions we can always base ourselves on what has been found to be
the best, the most appropriate, the most certain, the best advised; this is
the only object of the wisdom of the philosopher and the prudence of the
statesman.

Ars Conjectandi Basel. 1 71 3. Transl in B de Jouvenel The Art of Conjecture 1 967 (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Jons Jacob von Berzelius [Baron Berzelius] 1779-1848

9 [On moving from collecting to experimental work] Immediately with the

1 8 Jons Jacob von Berzelius [Baron Berzelius]

first participation in them I was seized with a feeling never previously
experienced; I was irrevocably gripped by this method of pursuing know-
ledge. I must needs repeat for myself the experiments I had seen him
[Ekmark] perform, and although I was unable to buy any instruments, I
improvised apparatus, with his help, which I myself could make ....
[When he first collected oxygen in a laboratory exercise] I . . . have seldom
experienced a moment of such pure and deep happiness as when the glow-
ing stick which was thrust into it lighted up and illuminated with unaccus-
tomed brilliancy my windowless laboratory.

Autobiographical Notes

Bhartrhari 5th or 6th Century

1 In this vain fleeting universe, a man

Of wisdom has two courses: first, he can
Direct his time to pray, to save his soul,

And wallow in religion’s nectar-bowl;

But, if he cannot, it is surely best
To touch and hold a lovely woman’s breast,

And to caress her warm round hips, and thighs,

And to possess that which between them lies.

[D D Kosambi (1907-1966) the editor of the Sanskrit text, was an Indian mathematician of wide
learning]

in D D Kosambi Satakatrayadi-subhasitasamgraha: The Epigrams attributed to Bhartrhari

Bhaskara [Acharya] 1 1 1 4-ca 1185

2 Beautiful and dear Lilavati, whose eyes are like a fawn’s . . .? How many
are the variations of form of the god Chambhu by the exchange of his ten
attributes held reciprocally in his several hands: namely the rope, the
elephant hook, the serpent, the tabor, the skull, the trident, the bedstead,
the dagger, the arrow and the bow . . .?

Sidd'hanta-siromani chapter in Lilavati {ca 1150) transl H T Colebrook. 1817 (London: Murray)
II. 16 and XIII. 269

3 A particle of tuition conveys science to a comprehensive mind; and having
reached it, expands of its own impulse. As oil poured upon water, as a
secret entrusted to the vile, as alms bestowed upon the worthy, however
little, so does science infused into a wise mind spread by intrinsic force.

Conclusion of Vija-Ganita chapter in Lilavati ( ca 1 1 50) transl H T Colebrook. 1 81 7 (London:
Murray)

The Bible

4 Oh . . . my desire is . . . that mine adversary had written a book.

Job 31: 35

5 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou
hast understanding.

Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath
stretched the line upon it?

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Or hast thou walked in the
search of the depth?

19 The Bible

Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Or hast thou seen the
doors of the shadow of death?

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of
Orion?

Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may
cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto
thee, Here we are? Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who
hath given understanding to the heart? . . . who can stay the bottles of
heaven?

Job 38: 4-5: 1 6-1 7; 31 ; 34-37

1 Evil devices are an abomination to the Lord: but pleasant words are pure.

Proverbs 1 5: 26

2 Where there is no vision the people perish : . . .

Proverbs 29: 18

3 ... he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.

Ecclesiastes 1:18

4 And furthermore, my son, be admonished : of making many books there is
no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Ecclesiastes 1 2: 1 2

5 Who was it who measured the water of the sea in the hollow of his hand
and calculated the dimensions of the heavens,

gauged the whole earth to the bushel,
weighed the mountains in scales,
the hills in a balance?

Isaiah 40: 12 in The Jerusalem Bible

6 And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he
should bring certain of the Children of Israel, and of the king’s seed, and
of the princes’ ;

Children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all
wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such
as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might
teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans.

[Those chosen were Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. whose history is
discussed further on in the chapter. This is the only mention of science in the Old Testament]
Daniel 1 : 3—4

7 ... MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

[Said to be Aramaic for: numbered, numbered, weighed, divided]

Daniel 5: 25

8 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than
sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and
their left hand; and also much cattle?

Jonah 4: 1 1

20

The Bible

1 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance:
but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

[Matthew Principle of Scientific Publication enunciated by R K Merton]

Matthew 25: 29

2 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and
counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

Luke 14: 28

3 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

[Inscribed on the wall of the main lobby at the CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia. USA]

John 8: 32

4 For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in
nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.

Acts 17: 21

5 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane
and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.

[This is the only mention of science in the New Testament — in Greek, gnosis]

1 Timothy 6: 20

6 And I went unto the angel, saying unto him that he should give me the
little book. And he saith unto me, Take it and eat it up; and it shall make
thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall be as sweet as honey.

Revelations 1 0: 9

7 .... But by measure and number and weight, thou didst order all things

Wisdom of Solomon (Apocrypha) 1 1 : 20

8 He that sinneth before his Maker, Let him fall into the hands of the
physician.

Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha) 38: 15

Al-Biruni 973-1048

9 Once a sage was asked why scholars always flock to the doors of the rich,
whilst the rich are not inclined to call at the doors of scholars. ‘The
scholars,’ he answered, ‘are well aware of the use of money, but the rich
are ignorant of the nobility of science.’

10 [On the science and culture of the Hindus] I can only compare their astro-
nomical and mathematical literature ... to a mixture of pearl shells and
sour dates, or of costly crystals and common pebbles. Both kinds of things
are equal in their eyes, since they cannot rise themselves to the methods of
strictly scientific deduction.

Hindustan transl C E Sachau, London, 1 888

Otto von Bismarck 1815-1898

1 1 Die Politik ist keine exakte Wissenschaft.

21 Niels Henrik David Bohr

Politics is not an exact science.

Speech, Prussian Chamber, 18 December 1863

Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett 1897-1974

1 A first-rate laboratory is one in which mediocre scientists can produce
outstanding work.

by M G K Menon in his Commemoration Lecture on H J Bhabha. 1967 The Royal Institution

2 The scientist can encourage numerical thinking on operational matters and
so help avoid running the war by gusts of emotion.

Operational Research in the RAF (London: The Air Ministry, HMSO)

William Blake 1757-1827

3 [On industrialisation] Hampstead, Highgate, Finchley, Muswell Hill rage
loud

Before Bromion’s iron Tongs and glowing Poker reddening fierce; . . .

Jerusalem plate 1 6. 1 .1-2

4 The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.

Mock on. Mock on: Voltaire, Rousseau ca 1 800

5 Consider Sexual Organisation and hide thee in the dust.

Jerusalem plate 34, ch 2

6 He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer,

For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organised particulars.

Jerusalem plate 55, 60-1

7 I must Create a System, or be enslaved by another Man’s;

I will not Reason and Compare; My business is to Create.

Jerusalem plate 1 0. 20

8 I was in a Printing-house in Hell, and saw the method in which knowledge
is transmitted from generation to generation.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

9 To teach doubt and Experiment
Certainly was not what Christ meant.

Blake Complete Writings

Niels Henrik David Bohr 1885-1962

10 ... two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are obviously absurd,

and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a
profound truth.

My Father in Niels Bohr: his life and work . . . ed S Rozental 1 967 (New York: Wiley)

22

Niels Henrik David Bohr

1 An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made,
in a very narrow field.

Edward Teller, 10 November 1972, US Embassy

2 When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet
too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.

in J Bronowski The Ascent of Man 1975 (London: BBC)

Ludwig Boltzmann 1844-1906
3 S = k log Cl

[Carved above the name of Ludwig Boltzmann on his tombstone in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna]

Wolfgang Bolyai 1775-1856

4 Detest it just as much as lewd intercourse; it can deprive you of all your
leisure, your health, your rest, and the whole happiness of your life.

[Letter to his son Jcinos, warning him to give up his attempts to prove the Euclidean postulate
on parallels]

Etienne Bonnot [Abbe de Condillac] 1714-1780

5 Voulez vous apprendre les sciences avec facilite ? Commencez par apprendre
votre language.

Do you wish to learn science easily? Then begin by learning your own
language.

Essai sur I'origine des connaissances humaines

Andrew Donald Booth 1918—

6 Every system is its own best analogue.

[Over tea at Birkbeck College, University of London, ca 1955]

Max Born 1882-1970

7 I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy.

Autobiography

Roger Joseph Boscovich 1711-1780

8 Homo hominem arreptum a Tellure, et ubicumque exigua impulsum vi vel

uno etiam oris flatu impetitum, ab hominum omnium commercio in infinitum
expelleret, nunquam per totam aeternitatem rediturum.

Were it not for gravity one man might hurl another by a puff of his breath
into the depths of space, beyond recall for all eternity.

Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis Vienna 1758, par 552. English transl J M Child. 1922 (La Salle.

Ill: Open Court)

James Boswell 1740-1795

9 When Dr Johnson felt, or fancied he felt, his fancy disordered, his constant
recurrence was to the study of arithmetic.

Life of Johnson Harper's edn. 1871. vol 2

Gordon Bottomiey 1874-1948

10 Your worship is your furnaces.

23 Georges Braque

Which, like old idols, lost obscenes.

Have molten bowels; your vision is
Machines for making more machines.

To Iron Founders and Others in Poems of Thirty Years 1 925 (London: Constable)

Pierre Boulez 1 925—

1 Music cannot move forward without science.

The Observer 27 July 1975

Matthew Boulton 1711-1780

2 I am selling what the whole world wants; power.

[Letter to Catherine the Great of Russia offering steam engines for sale]
in J D Bernal Science in History (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press)

Nicholas Bourbaki (pseudonym)

3 Structures are the weapons of the mathematician.

[Collective pseudonym of the Nancy school of mathematics. See Scientific American May 1957]

Francis Herbert Bradley 1846-1924

4 Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.

Appearance and Reality Preface

[Sir] William Lawrence Bragg 1890-1971

5 The electron is not as simple as it looks.

Recounted by Sir George Paget Thompson at the Electron Diffraction Conference Imperial College,
University of London, 1967

6 The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to
discover new ways of thinking about them.

in A Koestler and J R Smithies Beyond Fteductionism 1968 (London: Hutchinson)

Tycho Brahe 1546-1601

7 And when statesmen or others worry him [the scientist] too much, then he
should leave with his possessions. With a firm and steadfast mind one
should hold under all conditions, that everywhere the earth is below and
the sky above, and to the energetic man, every region is his fatherland.

[The 'brain drain' has existed as long as science]

Denmark, 1597

8 Now it is quite clear to me that there are no solid spheres in the heavens,
and those that have been devised by the authors to save the appearances,
exist only in the imagination, for the purpose of permitting the mind to
conceive the motion which the heavenly bodies trace in their courses.

['Saving the appearances' is the old expression for fitting the theory to the facts]

Georges Braque 1882-1963

9 L’art est fait pour troubler. La science r assure.
Art upsets, science reassures.

Pensies sur I'Art (Paris: Gallimard)

24 Georges Braque

1 La verite existe. On n' invent e que la mensonge.

The truth exists — only fictions are invented.

Pensees sur I' Art (Paris: Gallimard)

Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956

2 A us den Biicherhallen
Treten die Schlachter.

Die Kinder an sich driickend

Stehen die Mutter und durchforschen entgeistert

Den Himmel nach den Erfindungen der Gelehrten.

Out of the libraries
Come the slaughterers.

Pressing their children to them.

Mothers stand shocked, scanning the skies for the inventions of the
professors.

1940 Werkausgabe, Suhrkamp, Band 9

3 Und was niitzt freie Forschung ohne freie Zeit zu forschen ?

What good is freedom to research without free time to do it in?

Leben des Galilei 1958 (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag) scene 1

[Sir] David Brewster 1781-1868

4 And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why
does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers
of water? It is because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political
strife .... Can we behold unmoved the science of England, the vital
principle of her arts, struggling for existence, the meek and unarmed victim
of political strife?

Quarterly Review 1 830 43 320. 323-4 (reviewing Babbage's book Reflexions on the Decline of
Science in England)

5 The infant [Newton] . . . ushered into the world was of such diminutive
size, that, as his mother afterwards expressed it to Newton himself, he
might have been put into a quart-mug ....

Memoirs of Newton 1855

Robert Bridges 1844-1930

6 ... we only think to find

A structure of blind atoms to their habits enslaved.

The Testament of Beauty 1 930

7 Now will the Orientals make hither in return
Outlandish pilgrimage; their wise acres have seen
The electric light; in the West, and come to worship.

The Testament of Beauty 1 930

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin 1755-1826

8 La destinee des nations depend de la maniere dont elles se nourissent.
The destiny of countries depends on the way they feed themselves.

Physiologie du Gout 1 825

25 Rupert Brooke

Louis Victor de Broglie 1 892-

1 Two seemingly incompatible conceptions can each represent an aspect of
the truth .... They may serve in turn to represent the facts without ever
entering into direct conflict.

Dia/ectica I, 326

Jacob Bronowski 1908-1974

2 ... no science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of
power .... The time has come to consider how we might bring about a
separation, as complete as possible, between Science and Government in
all countries. I call this the disestablishment of science, in the same sense
in which the churches have been disestablished and have become indepen-
dent of the state.

Encounter July 1971

3 By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of
course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat,
they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice
nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes
are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race,
politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who
both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and
they are peculiarly the virtues of science.

Science and Human Values 1956 (London: Hutchinson)

4 The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

The Ascent of Man 1975 (London: BBC)

5 It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irrever-
ence to their studies ; they are not here to worship what is known, but to
question it.

The Ascent of Man 1975 (London: BBC)

6 Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. That is why science
has succeeded where magic failed : because it has looked for no spell to
cast on nature.

Science and Human Values 1956 (London: Hutchinson)

7 Science has nothing to be ashamed of, even in the ruins of Nagasaki.

Science and Human Values (New York: Julian Messner (Simon & Schuster))

Jacob Bronowski and Bruce Maziish 1908-1974 and 1923—

8 Every thoughtful man who hopes for the creation of a contemporary cul-
ture knows that this hinges on one central problem : to find a coherent
relation between science and the humanities.

The Western Intellectual Tradition 1960 (London: Hutchinson)

Rupert Brooke 1887-1915
9 But somewhere, beyond Space and Time

26 Rupert Brooke

Is wetter water, slimier slime.

And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,

Immense, of fishy form and mind.

Squamous, omnipotent, and kind.

Heaven

1 For Cambridge people rarely smile,

Being urban, squat, and packed with guile; . . .

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester written Berlin, 1912

George Spencer Brown 1 923—

2 To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practised, requires
years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not
busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an
effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know.
And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not
only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively
discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be
diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deaden-
ing personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them.

The Laws of Form 1969 (London: Allen & Unwin)

[Sir] Thomas Browne 1605-1682

3 ... indeed what reason may not go to Schools to the wisdoms of Bees,

Ants and Spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to doe what reason
cannot teach us? ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of
nature. Whales, Elephants, Dromidaries and Camels; these I confesse, are
the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow Engines
there is more Mathematicks, and the civilitie of these little Citizens more
neatly sets forth the wisedome of their Maker.

[Browne's writings are full of curious pre- and proto-scientific learning]

Religio Medici 1,15

4 God is like a skilful Geometrician.

[ cf Plutarch Symposiaes viii, 2: How Plato is to be understood when he saith: That God
continually is exercised in Geometry. It is not, however, in Plato's works]

Religio Medici 1,16

5 All things began in Order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again,
according to the Ordainer of Order, and the mystical mathematicks of the
City of Heaven.

Hydrotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus 1896 (London: Macmillan)

6 Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid
strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is music
wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may
maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and
regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the under-
standing they strike a note most full of harmony.

Religio Medici 11.9

27 Edmund Burke

1 Thus is Man that great and true Amphibian whose nature is disposed to
live ... in divided and distinguished worlds.

Reiigio Medici I, 34

2 What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid
himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all
conjecture. [Asked first by Tiberius. Suetonius Tiberius LXX]

[For proposed answers see Robert Graves The White Goddess 1948]

Urn Burial 1 658, ch 5

Giordano Bruno 1548-1600

3 Se no e vero ma e ben trovato.

It may not be true but it is well contrived.

Attributed

John Buchan [Lord Tweedsmuir] 1875-1940

4 To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

Memory Hold the Door 1 940

Robert Buchanan 1841-1901

5 Alone at nights, I read my Bible more and Euclid less.

An Old Dominie's Story

Buddha ca 563-483 bc

6 All composite things decay. Strive diligently.

[His last words]

Ludwig Buechner 1824-1899

7 Ohne Phosphor, kein Gedanke.

Without phosphorus there would be no thoughts.

Attributed

Georges Leclerc [Comte de] Buffon 1707-1788

8 ... all the work of the crystallographers serves only to demonstrate that
there is only variety everywhere where they suppose uniformity . . . that in
nature there is nothing absolute, nothing perfectly regular.

Histoire Nature/le des MinGraux Paris. 1783-1788, III

9 One can descend by imperceptible degree from the most perfect creature
to the most shapeless matter, from the best-organised animal to the rough-
est mineral.

De la Maniere d'6tudier et de Traiter /' Histoire Nature/le in Oeuvres Completes Paris, 1774-1791, I

Edward Bulmer-Lytton [Baron Lytton] 1803-1873

10 In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest.

Caxtoniana Essay X

Edmund Burke 1729-1797

1 1 The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators

28 Edmund Burke

has succeeded : and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

Reflections on the Revolution in France 1970 (London: Dent)

1 In the groves of their academy, at the end of every walk, you see nothing
but the gallows.

Reflections on the Revolution in France 1 970 (London: Dent)

[Sir] Frank Macfarlane Burnet 1 899-

2 There is virtually nothing that has come from molecular biology that can
be of any value to human living in the conventional sense of what is good,
and quite tremendous possibilities of evil, again in the conventional sense.

The Lancet 1 966 1 37

Daniel Hudson Burnham 1846-1912

3 Make no little plans, they have no power to stir men’s souls.

[Deviser of Lake front park in Chicago]

in Charles Moore Daniel H Burnham 1921 (Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin)

Robert Burns 1759-1796

4 Facts are chiels that winna ding, an’ downa be disputed. [Facts are entities
which cannot be manipulated or disputed.]

A Dream 30

5 I waive the quantum o’ the sin
The hazard of concealing

But oh : it hardens a’ within
And petrifies the feeling.

Epitaph to Young Friend 6

6 Some books are lies frae end to end,

An’ some great lies were never penn’d :

Ev’n ministers they ha’e been kenn’d,

In holy rapture,

A rousing whid at times to vend.

An’ nail’t wi’ Scripture.

[whid = lie]

Death and Doctor Hornbook 1 785

Vannevar Bush 1890-

7 The greatest event in the world today is not the awakening of Asia, nor the
rise of communism — vast and portentous as those events are. It is the
advent of a new way of living, due to science, a change in the conditions
of work and the structure of society which began not so very long ago in
the West, and is now reaching out over all mankind.

Samuel Butler 1612-1680

8 In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater :

29 George Gordon [Lord] Byron

For he, by geometric scale,

Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight.
If bread or butter wanted weight;

And wisely tell what hour o’ the day
The clock does strike, by Algebra.

Hudibras part 1 . 1 663

1 A learned society of late.

The glory of a foreign state,

Agreed, upon a summer’s night,

To search the Moon by her own light

The Elephant in the Moon ca 1676

Samuel Butler 1835-1902

2 A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.

Life and Habit VU|

3 We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in
atoms.

Notebooks

Herbert Butterfield 1900-

4 It [the Scientific Revolution] outshines everything since the rise of Chris-
tianity and reduces the Renaissance and the Reformation to the rank of
mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval
Christendom .... It looms so large as the real origin of the modern world
and of the modern mentality that our customary periodisation of European
history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.

The Origins of Modern Science 1949 (London: Bell)

George Gordon [Lord] Byron 1788-1824

5 ’Tis a pity learned virgins ever wed
With persons of no sort of education,

Or gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,
Grow tired of scientific conversation.

Don Juan I, XXII

6 ’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;

A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers line 51

7 When Newton saw an apple fall, he found . . .
A mode of proving that the earth turn’d round
In a most natural whirl, called gravitation.

And thus is the sole mortal who could grapple
Since Adam, with a fall or with an apple.

Don Juan 1 0, 1 1

30 George John Douglas Campbell [8th Duke of Argyll ]

George John Douglas Campbell [8th Duke of Argyll] 1823-1900

1 [Survival of the fittest — Herbert Spencer’s coinage] Nothing could be

happier than this invention for . . . giving vogue to whatever it might be
supposed to mean .... It is the fittest of all phrases to survive.

Organic Evolution Cross-examined 1898

Thomas Campbell 1777-1844

2 O Star-eyed Science! hast thou wandered there,
To waft us home the message of despair?

Pleasures of Hope part 2, line 325

Albert Camus 1913-1960

3 An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

Carnets 1935-1942 1962 (Paris: Gallimard)

Karel Capek 1860-1927

4 Rossum’s Universal Robots.

[The invention of the word 'robot']

R.U.R. 1920 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

Thomas Carlyle 1795-1881

5 Genius . . . means transcendent capacity of taking trouble.

Life of Frederick the Great ch 3

6 In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation : here therefore, by
Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance.

Sartor Resartus III, iii

7 It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters
the centre of gravity of the universe.

[Does it ?]

Sartor Resartus III

8 The Social Science, not a ‘gay science’ . . . ; no, a dreary, desolate, and
indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of
eminence, the dismal science.

Miscellanies, The Nigger Question

9 Such I hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder; that it makes all men
alike tall.

Alexis Carrel 1873-1944

10 L’ eminence me me d’un specialist e le rend plus dangereux.

The mere eminence of a specialist makes him the more dangerous.

L'homme cet inconnu (Paris: Librairie Plon) ch 1

Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] 1832-1898
1 1 What I tell you three times is true.

The Hunting of the Snark

31 Cato [the Censor ]

1 ‘Can you do addition?’ the White Queen asked. ‘What’s one and one and
one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alice, ‘I lost count.’

Through the Looking Glass

2 ‘Why,’ said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do it.'

Alice in Wonderland ch III

3 ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

‘1 don’t much care where . . . ,’ said Alice.

‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

‘So long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.

‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘If you only walk long enough.’

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Charles Frederick Carter 1919—

4 In use of equipment especially, insufficient attention is paid to real costs.
In some cases it would be cheaper not to install the equipment, but when-
ever it is needed to send each student in a separate chauffeur-driven Rolls-
Royce to use the same equipment at another institution.

Universities and Productivity University Conference, Committee of Vice-Chancellors and
Principals and the Association of University Teachers 21 March 1968

Cato [the Censor] 234-149 bc

5 How could one [Roman] haruspex look another in the face without laugh-
ing?

[A haruspex divined the future from the entrails of animals]
ascribed by Cicero De Diviniatione ii, 24

32

John J Cavanaugh

John J Cavanaugh

1 Even casual observation of the daily newspapers and the weekly news maga-
zines, leads a Catholic to ask, where are the Catholic Salks, Oppenheimers,
Einsteins?

Time 30 December 1 957

Miguel de Cervantes 1547-1616

2 Let us come now to references to authors, which other books contain and
yours lacks. The remedy for this is very simple; for you have nothing else
to do but look for a book which quotes them all from A to Z, as you say.
Then you put this same alphabet into yours. . . . And if it serves no other
purpose, at least that long catalogue of authors will be useful to lend
authority to your book at the outset.

Don Quixote tran si J M Cohen (London: Penguin Classics) Prologue

Paul Cezanne 1839-1906

3 Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, all in perspec-
tive.

in Emile Bernard Paul Cezanne 1 925

George Philip [Air Vice-Marshal] Chamberlain 1905-

4 Boffin: A Puffin, a bird with a mournful cry, got crossed with a Baffin, a
mercifully obsolete Fleet Air Arm aircraft. Their offspring was a Boffin, a
bird of astonishingly queer appearance, bursting with weird and sometimes
inopportune ideas, but possessed of staggering inventiveness, analytical
powers and persistance. Its ideas, like its eggs, were conical and unbreak-
able. You push the unwanted ones away, and they just roll back.

in R W Clark The Rise of the Boffins 1962 (London: Phoenix House)

Sebastien Roch Nicholas Chamfort 1740-1794

5 La Philosophie, ainsi que la Medecine, a beaucoup de drogues, tres peu de
bons remedes, et presque point de specifiques.

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and
hardly any specific cures.

Maximes et P ensues 1794 17

33 Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Chang Chih-tung 1837-1909

1 Chinese learning as the substance and Western learning for application.

Ch'uan-hsueh p'ien (An exhortation to learning) 1898

Erwin Chargaff 1905-

2 What counts, however, in science is to be not so much the first as the last.

Science 1971 172 639

Pierre Charron 1541-1603

3 La vraye science et le way etude de I’homme cest I’homme.
The true science and study of mankind is man.

De La Sagesse Preface

Geoffrey Chaucer ca 1340-1400

4 For out of olde feldes, as men seith,

Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yeer;

And out of olde bokes, in good feith,

Cometh all this newe science that men Iere.

The Par/ement of Fou/es line 22

5 Little Lewis my son, I have perceived well by certain signs thy ability to
learn sciences touching numbers and proportions; and I also consider thy
earnest prayer specially to learn the Treatise of the Astrolabe .... I will
show thee this treatise, divided into five parts, under full easy rules and in
plain English words; for Latin thou knowest as yet but little, my little
son ....

Treatise on the Astrolabe Preface

Anton Pavlovich Chekov 1860-1904

6 Under the flag of science, art and persecuted freedom of thought Russia
would one day be ruled by toads and crocodiles the like of which were
unknown even in Spain at the time of the Inquisition.

Letter of 27 August 1888 in Ronald Hingley Russian Writers and Society 1967 (London:
Hutchinson)

7 There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication
table; what is national is no longer science.

in V P Pononarev Mysli o nauke

Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] 1694-1773

8 The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous and the expense damn-
able.

[Of sexual intercourse]

Nature 1 970 227 772

Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874-1936

9 It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

The Point of a Pin in The Scandal of Father Brown 1935 (London: Cassell)

34

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

1 A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any
hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing
it well.

Chinese Proverbs

2 Every truth has its sect
And each sect has its truth.

3 Yu fang tze shui fang.

If the bowl be square, the water in it will also be square [indicating the
great influence of the prince in moulding the people].

Chou En-lai 1898-1976

4 We must catch up with this advanced level of world science .... Only by
mastering the most advanced sciences can we insure ourselves of an im-
pregnable national defence, a powerful and up-to-date economy and ade-
quate means to join the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies in
defeating the imperial powers, either in peaceful competition or in any
aggressive war which the enemy may unleash.

Report on the Question of the Intellectuals 14 January 1956

[Sir] Winston Spencer Churchill 1874-1965

5 ... I see the absolute truth and explanation of things, but something is
left out which upsets the whole, so by a larger sweep of the mind I have to
see a greater truth and a more complete explanation which comprises the
erring element. Nevertheless, there is still something left out. So we have to
take in a still wider sweep. The process continues inexorably. Depth beyond
depth of unendurable truth opens.

[Describing his impressions on coming out of an anaesthetic after an accident with a taxi]

My Early Life 1930 (London: Hamlyn)

6 Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we
must not stand in the path of improvement . . .

[30 August 1941 Minute on report of MAUD Committee that it would be possible to make a
uranium bomb]

The Second World War 1950 (London: Cassell) vol III

7 Every prophet has to come from civilisation, but every prophet has to go
into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society
and all that it has to give, and then he must serve periods of isolation and
meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.

[The justification for Sabbatical leave]

Essay on Moses

8 I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm
ground of Result and Fact.

The Story of the Malakand Field Force 1898 (London: Hamlyn)

9 It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

Roving Commission in My Early Life 1930 (London: Hamlyn)

35 Rudolf Clausius

1 Praise up the humanities, my boy. That will make them think that you are
broad-minded.

[Advice to R V Jones, his scientific consultant]

Bulletin of the Institute of Physics 1 962 13 101

2 Scientists should be on tap but not on top.

[Also attributed to Walter Elliot 1888-1958]

in Randolph Churchill Twenty-one Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Epilogue

3

4

The Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science.

Science 1969 163 1175

Unless British science had proved superior to German and unless its
strange, sinister resources had been effectively brought to bear in the
struggle for survival, we might well have been defeated, and being defeated,
destroyed.

The Second World War 1950 (London: Cassell) vol II

Marcus Tullius Cicero 106-43 bc

5 Omnia quae secundam Naturam fiunt sunt habenda in bonis.

The works of Nature must all be accounted good.

De Senectute XIX. 71

Arthur Charles Clarke 1917—

6 When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible,
he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible,
he is very probably wrong. (Clarke’s First Law.)

Profile of the Future 1973 (London: Gollancz)

Rudolf Clausius 1822-1888

7 Die Energie der Welt ist /constant. Die Entropie der Welt strebt einem
Maximum zu.

The energy of the world is constant. Its entropy tends to a maximum.

36 William Kingdon Clifford

William Kingdon Clifford 1845-1879

1 Remember, then, that scientific thought is the guide of action ; that the

truth at which it arrives is not that which we can ideally contemplate with-
out error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot
fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment of human pro-
gress, but human progress itself.

The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences 1 885 (Completed by Karl Pearson)

Arthur Hugh Clough 1819-1861

2 And as of old from Sinai’s top
God said that God is one,

By Science strict so speaks he now
To tell us there is None.

Earth goes by chemic forces; Heaven’s
A Mecanique Celeste.

And heart and mind of human kind
A watch-work as the rest.

The New Sinai

[Sir] Barnett Cocks 1907-

3 A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly
strangled.

New Scientist 8 November 1973

Jean Baptiste Coffinhal 18th Century

4 La Republique n'a pas besoin de Savants.

The Republic has no need of scientists.

[Before ordering the execution of Antoine Lavoisier, May 1794]

Encyclopaedia Britannica 1 91 1 , 1 1th edn, 1 6-295d

Joel Cohen

5 Physics — envy is the curse of biology.

Science 1971 172 675

Simon Cohen 1894-

6 The contributions of Jews to science and invention have been directly in
proportion to the amount of freedom they have enjoyed to participate in
the contemporary life of the people among whom they lived.

[Director of Research, Brooklyn, New York]

Universal Jewish Encyclopedia 1943, vol 9

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834

7 ... from the time of Kepler to that of Newton, and from Newton to

Hartley, not only all things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of
life and organisation, and even of the intellect and moral being, were
conjured within the magic circle of mathematical formulae.

The Theory of Life

8 The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn

37 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

whether it furnished him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, or
armaments, or playwiths but who sought to know it for the gratification of
knowing.

1 From Avarice thus, from Luxury and War

Sprang heavenly Science; and from Science Freedom.

Religious Mu sings lines 224-5

2 The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

[Scientists have continually reproached poets and painters for their cavalier attitude to the facts of
nature]

3 I should not think of devoting less than twenty years to an epic poem. Ten
years to collect materials and warm my mind with universal science. I
would be a tolerable mathematician. I would thoroughly understand
Mechanics ; Hydrostatics ; Optics and Astronomy ; Botany ; Metallurgy ;
Fossilism; Chemistry; Geology; Anatomy; Medicine; then the minds of
men, in all Travels, Voyages and Histories. So I would spend ten years;
the next five in the composition of the poem, and the next five in the
correction of it. So would I write, haply not unhearing of that divine and
nightly-whispering voice, which speaks to mighty minds, of predestined
garlands, starry and unwithering.

Letter to Cottle 1 796

4 [Sir Thomas Browne discovers] quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in
earth below, quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in
leaves, in everything.

[What Browne actually described was hexagonal close-packing in a plane. See Browne's Garden
of Cyrus for a curious neo- Pythagorean speculation on order and structure]

Encyclopaedia Britannica 1 91 1 , 1 1 th edn. 667

38

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1 Men, I think, have to be weighed, not counted.

[On the economics of the Scottish Clearances]

2 Readers may be divided into four classes: 1. Sponges, who absorb all they
read, and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied. 2. Sand-
glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the
sake of getting through the time. 3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the
dregs of what they read, and return i t nearly in the same state, only a little
dirtied. 4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what
they read, and enable others to profit by it also.

Lectures 181 1-1812

Alexander Comfort 1920-
3 For poets that have had my luck
Seldom write while they can kiss.

Haste to the wedding 1962 (London: Eyre & Spottiswode)

Arthur Holly Compton 1892-1962

4 The Italian Navigator has reached the New World. And how did he find
the Natives? Very friendly.

[Reporting in code by telephone to Conant that the first chain reaction had been initiated]
in Laura Fermi Atoms in the Family (Chicago. Ill: University of Chicago Press)

Karl Taylor Compton 1887-1954

5 When I was directing the research work of students in my days at Princeton
University, I always used to tell them that if the result of a thesis problem
could be forseen at its beginning it was not worth working at.

Hearings on Science Legislation USA. 1945. p623 in D S Greenberg The Politics of Pure Science
1967 (New York: New American Library) © D S Greenberg, 1967

Auguste Comte 1798-1857

6 In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathe-
matics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.

Positive Philosophy

7 Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology, why
should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

8 Prevoir pour pouvoir.

Foreknowledge is power.

9 To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.

Positive Philosophy

[Marquis de] Condorcet 1743-1794

10 All errors in government and in society are based on philosophic errors

39 Le Corbusier

which, in turn, are derived from errors in natural science.

Report and Project of a Decree on the General Organisation of Public Instruction

1 There should exist for all societies a science of maintaining and extending
their happiness; this is what has been called Part social. This science, to
which all others are contributors, has not been treated as a whole. The
science of agriculture, the science of economics, the science of government
. . . are only portions of this greater science. These separate sciences will
not reach their complete development until they have been made into a
well-organised whole .... And this result will be obtained sooner if all the
workers are led to follow a constant and uniform method of work.

in The Validation of Scientific Theories ed P G Frank, 1961 (New York: Macmillan)

Confucius 551-479 bc

2 The Master said: ‘I would not have him to act with me, who will unarmed
attack a tiger, or cross a river without a boat, dying without any regret.

My associate must be the man who proceeds to action full of solicitude,
who is fond of adjusting his plans, and then carries them into execution.’

The Analects in Sacred Books of the East transl J Legge. ca 1 895 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

3 Study the past if you would divine the future.

The Analects in Sacred Books of the East transl J Legge, ca 1 895 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

4 To no one but the Son of Heaven does it belong to order ceremonies, to
fix the measures, and to determine the written characters. Now, over the
kingdom, carriages have all wheels of the same size; all writing is with the
same characters; and for all conduct there are the same rules.

Doctrine of the Mean in Sacred Books of the East transl J Legge, ca 1895 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

John Constable 1776-1837

5 Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of
nature.

Stuart A Copans

6 Why, dear colleagues, must our findings
Now be put in sterile bindings?

Once physicians wrote for recreation.

Our great teachers through the ages,

Fracastoro, and [the] other sages.

Found writing could be fun, like fornication . . .

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1 973. Winter p232

Nicolaus Copernicus 1473-1543
7 Mathemata mathematicis scribuntur.

Mathematics is written for mathematicians.

De Revo/utionibus Preface dedicating the book to Pope Paul III

Le Corbusier 1887-1965
8 Une maison est une machine-a-habiter.

40 Le Corbusier

A house is a machine for living in.

Vers une architecture 1925. Paris. Transl F Etchells 1946 (London: Architectural Press)

William Cowper 1731-1800

1 ... some drill and bore

The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn
That he who made it, and reveal’d its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age.

Task Book iii The Garden Aldine edn, ed J Bruce, 1895 (London: Bell)

Stephen Crane 1871-1900

2 A man said to the universe:

‘Sir, I exist:’

‘However,’ replied the universe,

‘The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.’

War is kind and other lines 1 899 (New York: Knopf)

Francis Albert Eley Crew 1886-1973

3 A few of the results of my activities as a scientist have become embedded
in the very texture of the science I tried to serve —this is the immortality
that every scientist hopes for. I have enjoyed the privilege, as a universily
teacher, of being in a position to influence the thought of many hundreds
of young people and in them and in their lives I shall continue to live
vicariously for a while. All the things I care for will continue for they will
be served by those who come after me. I find great pleasure in the thought
that those who stand on my shoulders will see much farther than I did in
my time. What more could any man want?

The Meaning of Death in The Humanist Outlook ed A J Ayer, 1968 (London: Pemberton)

Edward Estlin Cummings [e e cummings] 1894-1962
4 O sweet spontaneous
earth how often
has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty

thou answereth them only with
spring.

Tulips and Chimneys 1924 (New York: Seltzer)

Marie [Sklodowska] Curie 1867-1934

5 There are sadistic scientists who hasten to hunt down error instead of estab-
lishing the truth.

[A L Mackay's translation]

6

It would be impossible, it would be against the scientific spirit . . .

41 Cyril Dean Darlington

Physicists always publish their results completely. If our discovery has a
commercial future that is an accident from which we must not profit. And
if radium is to be used in the treatment of disease, it seems to me impossible
for us to take advantage of that.

[On the patenting of radium. Discussion with her husband, Pierre]

Eve Curie The discovery of radium in Marie Curie transl V Sheean, 1938 (London: Heinemann)

[Lord] George Nathaniel Curzon 1859-1925

1 The East is a university in which the scholar never takes a degree.

[28 October 1898]

Indian Speeches I, vii. In Kenneth Rose Superior Person 1969 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

2 In the case of Japan I must confess to having departed widely from the
accepted model of treatment. There will be found nothing in those pages of
the Japan of temples, tea-houses, and bric-a-brac — that infinitesimal seg-
ment of the national existence which the traveller is so prone to mistake
for the whole, and by doing which he fills the educated Japanese with such
unspeakable indignation. I have been more interested in the efforts of a
nation, still in pupilage, to assume the manners of the full-grown man, in
the constitutional struggles through which Japan is passing, in her relations
with foreign Powers, and in the future that awaits her immense ambitions.

Problems of the Far East 1 894, Preface to the first edition

The Sixth Dalai Lama 1682-1705

3 This girl was perhaps not born of a mother.

But blossomed in a peach tree:

Her love fades

Quicker than peach-flowers.

Although I know her soft body
I cannot sound out her heart ;

Yet we have but to make a few lines on a chart
And the distance of the farthest stars
In the sky can be measured.

Tibet transl G Tucci, 2nd edn, 1973 (London: Elek)

Jean Le Rond D’Alembert 1717-1783

4 Allez en avant, et la foi vous viendra.

Push on, and faith will catch up with you.

Salvador Dali 1904-

5 And now the announcement of Watson and Crick about DNA. This is for
me the real proof of the existence of God.

in J F C Crick Of Molecules and Men 1966 (Washington, DC: University of Washington Press)

Cyril Dean Darlington 1903—

6 It is against the background of conflict and confusion in the relations of
science and society that we find ourselves confronted with a crisis in the
history of mankind, and particularly in the history of human government,

42

Cyril Dean Darlington

It is a crisis arising from the rapidly increasing power given to man by
science. It is a crisis such as we are accustomed to leave to the arbitrement
of sectional interests supported by shouts and cries. But it is one to which
scientific inquiry can provide a solution. For the fundamental problem of
government is one that can be treated by exact biological methods. It is
the problem of the character and the causation of the differences that exist
among men, among the races, classes, and individuals which compose
mankind. The little passions and prejudices we have been discussing so far
fade into nothingness in face of the gigantic errors and illusions that can be,
and are being, mobilized to defeat or pervert scientific truth in this field.

Moncure Conway Memorial Lecture 1948 (London: Watts)

1 Mankind . . . will not willingly admit that its destiny can be revealed by the
breeding of flies or the counting of chiasmata.

Royal Society Tercentenary Lecture 1960

2 No society can however reach a high development without some kind of
priesthood, which organizes a religion designed to govern its breeding
behaviour. If breeding behaviour is left at the sole discretion of a governing
class, that class, and with it the whole society, is liable to disintegrate.

The Evolution of Man and Society 1969 (London: Allen & Unwin)

Charles Darwin 1808-1882

3 The preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious
variations, I call Natural Selection, or Survival of the Fittest. Variations
neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and
would be left a fluctuating element.

Origin of Species

4 Great is the power of steady misrepresentation — but the history of science
shows how, fortunately, this power does not long endure.

Origin of Species

5 I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the
religious feelings of anyone.

Origin of Species

6 My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general
laws out of large collections of facts.

Origin of Species

Erasmus Darwin 1731-1802

7 Shall we conjecture that one and the same kind of living filaments is and
has been the cause of all organic life?

Zoonomia I. 51 1

8 Soon shall thy arm, unconquer’d steam: afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;

43

Stevan Dedijer

Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the field of air.

The Botanic Garden I, i, 289

[Sir] Francis Darwin 1848-1925

1 But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to
the man to whom the idea first occurs.

Eugenics Review 1914 6 1

Sushil Chandra Dasgupta

2 Note on Love Waves in a Homogeneous Crust Laid upon a Heterogeneous
Medium.

[Title of paper. These waves were called after A E H Love. See A Treatise on the Mathematical
Theory of Elasticity 1892 (London: Cambridge UP)]

Indian Journal of Theoretical Physics 1 953 1 121

[Sir] Humphrey Davy 1778-1829

3 The progression of physical science is much more connected with your
prosperity than is usually imagined. You owe to experimental philosophy
some of the most important and peculiar of your advantages. It is not by
foreign conquests chiefly that you are become great, but by a conquest of
nature in your own country.

Lecture at the Royal Institution 1809

Stevan Dedijer 191 1—

4 The fruitful pursuit of scientific truth and its application, once discovered,
is not just a matter of talented individuals well trained in foreign univer-
sities and supplied with the equipment they desire. These are very import-

44

Stevan Dedijer

ant, but the cultivation of science is a collective undretaking [written as
‘understanding’] and success in it depends on an appropriate social structure.
This social structure is the scientific community and its specialised institu-
tions.

Minerva 1963 2 81

John Dee 1527-1608

1 A marveilous newtrality have these things mathematical!, and also a

strange participation between things superanturall, immortall, intellectuall,
simple and indivisible, and things naturall, mortall, sensible, componded
and divisible.

Preface to his edition of Euclid 1 570

Daniel Defoe ca 1660-1731

2 Necessity . . . has so violently agitated the wits of men at this time, that it
seems not at all improper ... to call it, the Projecting Age .... The Art of
War, which I take to be the highest Perfection of Human Knowledge, is a
sufficient proof of what I say, especially in conducting Armies, and in offen-
sive Engines; witness the new ways of Mines, Fougades, Entrenchments,
Attacks, Lodgments, and a long Et Cetera of New Inventions .... But if

I would search for a Cause, from whence it comes to pass that this Age
swarms with such a multitude of Projectors more than usual; who besides
the Innumerable Conceptions which dye in the bringing forth ... do really
every day produce new Contrivances, Engines, and Projects to get Money,
never before thought of; if, I say, I would examine whence this comes to
pass, it must be thus : The Losses and Depredations which this War brought
with it at first were exceeding many . . . [Merchants], prompted by Neces-
sity, rack their Wits for New Contrivances, New Inventions, New Trades,
Stocks, Projects, and anything to retrieve the desperate Credit of their
Fortunes.

An Essay upon Projects 1697, Introduction

Democritos [of Abdera] ca 460- ca 370 bc

3 Everything existing in the Universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.

[Taken by Jacques Monod as the title of his book]

4 Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

Rene Descartes 1596-1650

5 I thought the following four [rules] would be enough, provided that I made
a firm and constant resolution not to fail even once in the observance of
them.

The first was never to accept anything as true if I had not evident know-
ledge of its being so; that is, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice,
and to embrace in my judgment only what presented itself to my mind
so clearly and distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it. The second, to
divide each problem I examined into as many parts as was feasible, and
as was requisite for its better solution. The third, to direct my thoughts in

45 Patric Dickinson

an orderly way ; beginning with the simplest objects, those most apt to be
known, and ascending little by little, in steps as it were, to the knowledge
of the most complex ; and establishing an order in thought even when the
objects had no natural priority one to another. And the last, to make
throughout such complete enumerations and such general surveys that I
might be sure of leaving nothing out.

These long chains of perfectly simple and easy reasonings by means of
which geometers are accustomed to carry out their most difficult demon-
strations had led me to fancy that everything that can fall under human
knowledge forms a similar sequence; and that so long as we avoid accepting
as true what is not so, and always preserve the right order of deduction of
one thing from another, there can be nothing too remote to be reached in
the end, or too well hidden to be discovered.

Discours de !a m6thode pour biert conduire sa raison et chercher la v6rit6 dans les sciences 1 637

1 If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any
animal (e.g. man), we could from that alone, by reasons entirely mathe-
matical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of
its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this confor-
mation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed.

Oeuvres iv, 494

2 It is well to know something of the manners of various peoples, in order
more sanely to judge our own, and that we do not think that everything
against our modes is ridiculous, and against reason, as those who have
seen nothing are accustomed to think.

Discourse on Method part 1

3 A vacuum is repugnant to reason.

Principles of Philosophy 2

Charles Dickens 1812-1870

4 ‘Yes I have a pair of eyes’, replied Sam, ‘and that’s just it. If they was a
pair o’ patent double million magnifyin’ gas microscopes of hextra power,
p’raps I might be able to see through a flight o’ stairs and a deal door;
but bein’ only eyes, you see, my vision’s limited’.

The Pickwick Papers

5 When he has learnt that bottinney means a knowledge of plants, he goes
and knows ’em. That’s our system, Nickleby; what do you think of it?

Nicholas Nickleby

Emily Dickinson 1830-1886

6 Faith is a fine invention
For gentlemen who see;

But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency.

Poems. Second Series ca 1 880, XXX

Patric Dickinson 1914 —

7 Who were they, what lonely men.

46 Patric Dickinson

Imposed on the fact of night

The fiction of constellations

And made commensurable

The distances between

Themselves, their loves, and their doubt

Of governments and nations?

Who made the dark stable
When the light was not? Now
We receive the blind codes
Of spaces beyond the span
Of our myths, and a long dead star
May only echo how
There are no loves nor gods
Man can invent to explain
How lonely all men are.

Joc/re/l Bank in The World I See 1960 (London: Chatto & Windus)

Stella Didacus [Diego de Estella] 1524-1578

1 Pygmaeos gigantum humeris impositos, plusquam ipsos gigantes videre.

Dwarfs on the shoulders of giants see further than the giants themselves.

Eximii verbi divini CONCIONATORIS ORD/NN/S M/NORUM Regu/aris Observantiae Antwerp,
1622. See R K Merton On the Shoulders ol Giants 1965 (New York: Free Press)

Denis Diderot 1713-1784

2 ... the following definition of an animal: a system of different organic
molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion
similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the
creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most
suitable position for its shape and comfort.

PensGes sur T interpretation de la nature 1 753, LI

3 Do you see this egg? With it you can overthrow all the schools of theology,
all the churches of the earth.

Conversations with D'Alembert

4 Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of
the last priest.

Dithyrambs sur la fete de rois

5 We have three principal means: observation of nature, reflection, and
experiment. Observation gathers the facts, reflection combines them, experi-
ment verifies the result of the combination. It is essential that the obser-
vation of nature be assiduous, that reflection be profound, and that experi-
mentation be exact. Rarely does one see these abilities in combination.

And so, creative geniuses are not common.

Pensies sur Vinterpritation de la nature 1 753, XV

6 Why should electricity not modify the formation and properties of crystals?

P ensues sur /’interpretation de la nature 1753, XXXIV

47 John Donne

1 [Of him] Je suis bon encyclopediste,

Je connais le mal et le bien,

Je suis Diderot a la piste;

Je connais tout et ne crois rien !

I am the true encyclopedist,

I know good and evil,

I am Diderot on the track;

I know everything and believe nothing !

in P Grosclaude Un Audacieux Message: L’Encyclopddie Paris, 1951

Diogenes [the Cynic] ca 400-ca 325 bc

2 For the answer was good that Diogenes made to one that asked him in

mockery. How it came to pass that philosophers were the followers of rich
men, and not rich men of philosophers. He answered soberly, and yet
sharply. Because the one sort knew what they had need of, and the other
did not.

in Francis Bacon Advancement of Learning I, III. 10

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac 1902-

3 I think that there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more important
to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment. If
Schroedinger had been more confident of his work, he could have published
it some months earlier, and he could have published a more accurate
equation .... It seems that if one is working from the point of view of
getting beauty in one’s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one
is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the
results of one’s work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be
too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features
that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with
further developments of the theory ....

Scientific American May 1963

Theodosius Gregorievich Dobzhansky 1900-1975

4 It is possible that there is, after all, something unique about man and the
planet he inhabits.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1 972, Winter, ppl 57-75

5 Sir, I do not question your honesty, I question your intelligence.

Nature 1 1 March 1 976

Aelius Donatus 4th Century

6 Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.

To the devil with those who published before us.

[Quoted by St Jerome, his pupil]

John Donne ca 1571-1631

7 Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with mee.
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,

Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest.

48

John Donne

By cursed Cains race invented be,

And blest Seth vext us with Astronomie.
There’s nothing simply good, nor ill alone,
Of every quality Comparison
The onely measure is, and judge, Opinion.

The Progress of the Soule 1 601 , lines 51 3-20

1 Why grass is green, or why our blood is red
Are mysteries which none have reach’d unto.

Of the Progress of the Soul. The Second Anniversary lines 228-9

2 Then, soul, to thy first pitch work up again ;

Know that all lines which circles do contain,

For once that they the centre touch, do touch
Twice the circumference; and be thou such;

Double on heaven, thy thoughts on earth employed;

[Elements of Euclid III. 20]

Of the Progress of the Soul. The Second Anniversary lines 435-9

3 And new philosophy call all in doubt;

The element of fire is quite put out;

The sun is lost, and th’earth, and no man’s wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.

And freely men confess that this world’s spent
When in the planets and the firmament
They seek so many new and see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.

’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;

All just supply and all relation.

Prince, subject, father, son are things forgot,

For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a Phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind of which he is but he.

Anatomie of the World. First Anniversary 1 61 1 . lines 205-1 8

John Dos Passos 1896-1970

4 All his life Steinmetz was a piece of apparatus belonging to General
Electric.

Proteus in The 42nd Parallel (Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin)

Mary Douglas 1921-

5 Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic
ordering and classification of matter.

Purity and Danger (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

[Sir] Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930

6 You will, I am sure, agree with me that if page 534 finds us only in the
second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

[The logic is not impeccable, but we must agree with the sentiment]

Sherlock Holmes in The Valley of Fear (London: Murray & Cape) ch 1

49

Freeman Dyson

1 Sherlock Holmes : ‘From a drop of
water a logician could infer the
possibility of an Atlantic or a
Niagara without having seen or
heard of one or the other.’

A Study in Scarlet (London: Murray)

2 Sherlock Holmes : ‘It is of the
highest importance in the art of
detection to be able to recognise out
of a number of facts which are
incidental and which are vital ....

I would call your attention to the
curious incident of the dog in the
night-time. The dog did nothing in the
night-time. That was the curious
incident.’

Silver Blaze in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

When you have eliminated the imposs-
ible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth.

The Sign of Four in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (London: Murray)

John Dryden 1631-1700

4 [Of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, who ‘made the whole
body of vice his study’]

A man so various that he seem’d to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome.

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;

Was everything by starts, and nothing long:

But, in the course of one revolving moon,

Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

Absalom and Achitophel I, line 545

Albrecht Diirer 1471-1528

5 But when great and ingenious artists behold their so inept performances,
not undeservedly do they ridicule the blindness of such men; since sane
judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no tech-
nical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. Now the sole
reason why painters of this sort are not aware of their own error is that
they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or
become an absolute artist ; but the blame for this should be laid upon their
masters, who are themselves ignorant of this art.

The Art of Measurement 1 525. Preface to Of the Just Shaping of Letters transl R T Nichol,

Book III

Freeman Dyson 1923—

6 Most of the papers which are submitted to the Physical Review are rejected,
not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible.

50 Freeman Dyson

Those which are impossible to understand are usually published.

Innovation in Physics

Maria von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916

1 The manuscript in the drawer either rots or ripens.

Aphorismen

[Meister] Eckhart ca 1260-1327

2 The greatest power available to man is not to use it.

Nature 1973 245 279

[Sir] Arthur Stanley Eddington 1882-1944

3 I believe there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,044,
717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the universe
and the same number of electrons.

[2 256 x 136]

Tamer Lecture 1938. In The Philosophy of Physical Science 1939 (London: Cambridge UP)

4 There was once a brainy baboon,

Who always breathed down a bassoon,

For he said, ‘It appears

That in billions of years
I shall certainly hit on a tune’.

New Pathways in Science 1935 (London: Cambridge UP) ch 3

5 We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one
are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and’.

Gosta Carl Henrik Ehrensvard 1905-

6 Consciousness will always be one degree above comprehensibility.

Man on Another World 1965 (Chicago, III: University of Chicago Press)

Paul Ralph Ehrlich 1932-

7 The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.

Saturday Review 5 June 1971

Manfred Eigen 1927—

8 A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a
third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.

The Physicist's Conception of Nature ed Jagdish Mehra. 1973 (Dordrecht: Reidel)

Albert Einstein 1879-1955

9 Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Scientific American February 1 976

10 God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates
empirically.

In L Infeld Quest 1942 (London: Gollancz)

51 Albert Einstein

1 Dear Sir, April 23, 1953

Development of Western Science is based on two great achievements; the
invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the
Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal
relationship by systematic experiment (Renaissance). In my opinion one
has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps.
The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.

Sincerely yours,

A Einstein

Letter to J E Switzer in D J de S Price Science since Babylon 1 962 (New Haven. Conn: Yale
UP)

2 Gott wiirfelt nicht.

God casts the die, not the dice (Jean Untermeyer).

Albert Einstein: creator and rebel 1973 (London: Hart-Davis. MacGibbon)

3 However, the progress of science presupposes the possibility of unre-
stricted communication of all results and judgments — freedom of expression
and instruction in all realms of intellectual endeavour. By freedom I
understand social conditions of such a kind that the expression of opinions
and assertions about general and particular matters of knowledge will not
involve dangers or serious disadvantages for him who expresses them.

Out of My Later Years 1950 (London: Thames and Hudson)

52 Albert Einstein

1 How is it possible to control man’s mental evolution so as to make him
proof against the psychoses of hate and destructiveness. Here I am thinking
by no means only of the so-called uncultured masses. Experience proves
that it is rather the so-called Intelligentzia that is most apt to yield to these
disastrous collective suggestions, since the intellectual has no direct contact
with life in the raw but encounters it in its easiest synthetic form— the
printed page.

Letter to Sigmund Freud

2 The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday think-
ing.

Out of My Later Years 1950 (London: Thames and Hudson)

3 ... no' only to know how nature is and how her transactions are carried
through, but also to reach as far as possible the utopian and seemingly
arrogant aim of knowing why nature is thus and not otherwise ....

Festschrift fur Aurei Stodoia 1929 (Zurich: Orell Fiissli Verlag)

4 One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured
against reality, is primitive and childlike— and yet it is the most precious
thing we have.

Albert Einstein: creator and rebel 1 973 (London: Hart- Da via MacGibbon)

5 The only justification for our concepts is that they serve to represent the
complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy. I am
convinced that the philosophers had a harmful effect upon the progress of
scientific thinking in removing certain fundamental concepts from the
domain of empiricism, where they are under control, to the intangible
heights of the a priori — the universe of ideas is just as little independent of
the nature of our experiences as clothes are of the form of the human body

in P A Schlipp Albert Einstein:. Philosopher-Scientist 1 949 (Evanston. Ill: The Library of Living
Philosophers)

6 Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem — in my opinion — to
characterize our age.

Out of My Later Years 1950 (London: Thames and Hudson)

7 Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht.

God is subtle but he is not bloody-minded.

[Note in the Professor’s lounge of the Mathematics Department at Princeton. "God is slick, but he
ain’t mean’ — Einstein's own translation to Derek Price, 1946]

8 The Temple of Science is a multi-faceted building.

in G Holton Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought 1973 (Cambridge. Mass: Harvard UP)

Dwight David Eisenhower 1890-1969

9 In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-
industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist .... In holding scientific research and discovery in
respect, as we should, we must be alert to the equal and opposite danger

53 Ralph Waldo Emerson

that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-techno-
logical elite.

Farewell Address as President of the USA. 1961

Walter Elliot 1888-1958

1 Force is not to be used to its uttermost. Nor is thought to be pushed to its
logical conclusion.

[As Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland]

Address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The Scotsman 22 May 1957

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

2 The English mind turns every abstraction it can receive into a portable
utensil, or working institution.

Science Policy 1 973 2 1 42

3 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Self-reliance Essay

4 I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Journals May 1849

5 If a man . . . make a better mouse-trap than his neighbour, tho’ he build
his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

[See The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations for the quotation's history]

6 An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Self-reliance Essay

54 Ralph Waldo Emerson

1 Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind.

Ode, inscribed to W H Channing

2 Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilu-
tions; the surest is time. This cup which nature puts to our lips, has a
wonderful virtue, surpassing that of any other draught. It opens the senses,
adds power, fills us with exalted dreams which we call hope, love, ambition,
science; especially it creates a craving for larger draughts of itself.

Friedrich Engels 1820-1895

3 ... science progresses in proportion to the mass of knowledge that is left to
it by preceding generations, that is under the most ordinary circumstances
in geometrical proportion.

in M M Karpov Osnovyyie zakonomernosti razvitiya estestvoznaniya Rostov State University. 1963

4 Freedom is the recognition of necessity.

[The title chosen by J D Bernal for his book of essays]

5 If you think that I have got hold of something here please keep it to your-
self. I do not want some lousy Englishman to steal the idea. And it will
take a long time to get it into shape.

Letter to Marx in Selected Writings ed W 0 Henderson, 1967 (London: Penguin)

6 In science, each new point of view calls forth a revolution in nomenclature.

Selected Works of Marx and Engels vol 3 edn, 1 973 (London: Lawrence & Wishart)

7 In the book [A Treatise on Natural Philosophy Oxford, 1867] by these two
Scotsmen [W Thomson and P G Tait] thinking is forbidden, only calcula-
tion is permitted. No wonder that at least one of them, Tait, is accounted
one of the most pious Christians in pious Scotland.

Dialectics of Nature Moscow, 1954

8 Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx
discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple
fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must
first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue
politics, science, religion, art, etc, and that therefore the production of the
immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of
economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch,
form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal concep-
tions, the art and even the religious ideas of the people concerned have
been evolved, and in the light of which these things must therefore be
explained, instead of vice versa as had hitherto been the case. But that is
not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the
present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that
this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value
suddenly threw light on the problem in trying to solve which all previous
investigators, both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been
groping in the dark. Two such discoveries would be enough for one life-
time. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such dis-

55

Henri Jean Fabre

covery. But in every single field which Marx investigated — and he in-
vestigated very many fields, none of them superficially — in every field, even
in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries. Such was the
man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx
a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with
which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose
practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he
experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved im-
mediate revolutionary changes in industry and in the general course of
history.

[Funeral oration]

Selected Works of Marx and Engels vol 3 edn, 1973 (London: Lawrence & Wishart)

1 Life is the mode of existence of proteins, and this mode of existence essen-
tially consists in the constant self-renewal of the chemical constituents of
these substances.

Anti-Duhring 1878

2 While natural science up to the end of the last century was predominantly
a collecting science, a science of finished things, in our century it is essen-
tially a classifying science, a science of processes, of the origin and develop-
ment of these things and of the interconnection which binds all these
processes into one great whole.

Ludwig Feuerbach 1 886

Dennis Joseph Enright 1920-

3 To shoot a man against the National Library wall!

- — The East unsheathes its barbarous finger-nail.

In Europe this was done in railway trucks,

Cellars underground, and such sequestered nooks.

[Written while Visiting Professor in Singapore]

An Unfortunate Poem (It) Warm Protest in Addictions 1962 (London: Chatto & Windus)

Euclid [of Alexandria] ca 4th Century bc

4 A youth who had begun to read geometry with Euclid, when he had learnt
the first proposition, inquired, ‘What do I get by learning these things?’

So Euclid called a slave and said, ‘Give him threepence, since he must
make a gain out of what he learns.’

in Stobaeus Extracts

Leonard Euler 1707-1783

5 Madam, I have just come from a country where people are hanged if they
talk.

[In Berlin, excusing his taciturnity in conversation with the Queen Mother of Prussia, on his
return from Russia]

in A Vucinich Science in Russian Culture 1965 (London: Peter Owen)

Henri Jean Fabre 1823-1915

6 History records the names of royal bastards, but cannot tell us the origin
of wheat.

56 John King Fairbank

John King Fairbank 1907-

1 The question now is: Can we understand our stupidity? This is a test of
intellect, not of character.

[Professor of Chinese at Harvard]

The Observer 4 May 1975

Michael Faraday 1791-1867

2 [On being offered the Presidency of the Royal Society] Tyndall, I must
remain plain Michael Faraday to the last; and let me now tell you, that if I
accepted the honour which the Royal Society desires to confer upon me, I
would not answer for the integrity of my intellect for a single year.

Tyndall's life in Experimental Researches in Electricity (New York: Dover)

3 One day, Sir, you may tax it.

[To Mr Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who asked about the practical worth of
electricity]

in R A Gregory Discovery 1918 (London: Macmillan)

4 Work, Finish, Publish.

[Benjamin Franklin said much the same]

Haneef A Fatmi and R W Young

5 Intelligence is that faculty of mind, by which order is perceived in a
situation previously considered disordered.

Nature 1 970 228 97

Feng-shen Yin-Te 1771-1810

6 With a microscope you see the surface of things. It magnifies them but
does not show you reality. It makes things seem higher and wider. But do
not suppose you are seeing things in themselves.

The Microscope 1 798. See Report of the Librarian of Congress 1 937

Lawrence Ferlinghetti 1919—

7 Constantly risking absurdity

and death

whenever he performs

above the heads

of his audience

the poet like an acrobat

climbs on rime

to a high wire of his own making . . .

For he’s the super realist

who must perforce perceive

taut truth

before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance

toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits

with gravity

to start her death-defying leap . . .

A Coney Island of the Mind 1 958 (New York: New Directions) © Lawrence Ferlinghedi. 1 958

57 [Sir] Ronald Aylmer Fisher

Pierre de Fermat 1601-1665

1 [In the margin of his copy of Diophantus’ Arithmetica, Fermat wrote] To
divide a cube into two other cubes, a fourth power or in general any power
whatever into two powers of the same denomination above the second is
impossible, and I have assuredly found an admirable proof of this, but the
margin is too narrow to contain it.

[This was his famous Last Theorem]

transl from Latin in Source Book of Mathematics 1929 (Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill)

Enrico Fermi 1901-1954

2 Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men
must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.

in Laura Fermi Atoms in the family (Chicago, III: University of Chicago Press)

Richard Phillips Feynman 1918-

3 Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most impor-
tant hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that
animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things
do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made
of atoms acting according to the laws of physics. This was not known from
the beginning it took some experimenting and theorizing to suggest this
hypothesis, but now it is accepted, and it is the most useful theory for
producing new ideas in the field of biology.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics vol 1. 1963 (London: Addison-Wesley)

4 The whole question of imagination in science is often misunderstood by
people in other disciplines. They try to test our imagination in the follow-
ing way. They say, ‘Here is a picture of some people in a situation. What
do you imagine will happen next?’ When we say, ‘I can’t imagine,’ they
may think we have a weak imagination. They overlook the fact that what-
ever we are allowed to imagine in science must be consistent with everything
else we know, that the electric fields and the waves we talk about are not
just some happy thoughts which we are free to make as we wish, but ideas
which must be consistent with all the laws of physics we know. We can’t
allow ourselves to seriously imagine things which are obviously in contra-
diction to the known laws of nature. And so our kind of imagination is
quite a difficult game. One has to have the imagination to think of some-
thing that has never been seen before, never been heard of before. At the
same time the thoughts are restricted in a straitjacket, so to speak, limited
by the conditions that come from our knowledge of the way nature really
is. The problem of creating something which is new, but which is consistent
with everything which has been seen before, is one of extreme difficulty.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics vol 2. 1963 (London: Addison-Wesley)

[Sir] Ronald Aylmer Fisher 1890-1962

5 Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree
of improbability.

6 No aphorism is more frequently repeated . . . than that we must ask Nature

58 [5;>] Ronald Aylmer Fisher

few questions, or ideally, one question at a time. The writer is convinced
that this view is wholly mistaken. Nature, he suggests, will best respond to
a logically and carefully thought out questionnaire; indeed if we ask her a
single question, she will often refuse to answer until some other topic has
been discussed.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1 973, Winter, pi 80

Michael Flanders 1922-1975

1 One of the great problems of the world today is undoubtedly this problem
of not being able to talk to scientists, because we don’t understand science;
they can’t talk to us because they don’t understand anything else, poor
dears.

Michael Flanders and Donald Swann At the Drop of a Hat

Gustave Flaubert 1821-1880

2 Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Bernard Le Bovier [Sieur de] Fontenelle 1657-1757

3 Toute la philosophie n'est fondee que sur deux choses: sur ce qu'on a !' esprit
curieux et les yeux mauvais.

Science originates from curiosity and weak eyes.

Entretiens sur la Plurality des Mondes, Premier Soir

4 A work of morality, politics, criticism . . . will be more elegant, other
things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

Preface sur I'UtilitS des Math6matiques et de la Physique 1729

5 Mathematicians are like lovers .... Grant a mathematician the least
principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also
grant him, and from this consequence another.

6 When the heavens were a little blue arch, stuck with stars, methought the
universe was too straight and close: I was almost stifled for want of air:
but now it is enlarged in height and breadth, and a thousand vortices taken
in. I begin to breathe with more freedom, and I think the universe to be
incomparably more magnificent than it was before.

[Written in 1 686]

George Fox 1624-1691

7 I came to know God experimentally.

[Fox was the founder of the Society of Friends]

[Sir] Theodore Fox 1899—

8 We shall have to learn to refrain from doing things merely because we
know how to do them.

[Editor of The Lancet]

The Lancet 1 965 2 801

59 Sigmund Freud

A Frankland 1825-1899

1 I am convinced that the future progress of chemistry as an exact science
depends very much upon the alliance with mathematics.

American Journal of Mathematics 1 878 1 349

Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790

2 He snatched lightning from the heavens and sceptres from kings.

[Epitaph on him by Turgot]

3 To study, to finish, to publish.

[See Michael Faraday]

[Sir] James George Frazer 1854-1941

4 But while science has this much in common with magic that both rest on
a faith in order as the underlying principle of all things . . . magic differs
widely from that which forms the basis of science.

The Golden Bough abridged edn, 1925 (London: Macmillan)

Frederick the Great [King of Prussia] 1712-1786

5 I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the
only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on
synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with probable truth;
moreover it has the same method in every country.

Oeuvres

Sigmund Freud 1856-1939

6 lam not really a man of science, not an observer, nor an experimenter,
and not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador . . .
with the curiosity, the boldness and the tenacity that belong to that type
of person.

in E Jones Life and Work of Sigmund Freud 1953 (London: Hogarth Press) vol 1

7 I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communistic system ;
I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is advan-
tageous and expedient. But I am able to recognize that psychologically it is
founded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing private property one
deprives the human love of aggression of one of its instruments .... This
instinct did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme

in primitive times when possessions were still extremely scanty.

An Outline of Psychoanalysis (last posthumous essays). In R Ardrey The Territorial Imperative
1967 (London: Collins)

8 My life and work has been aimed at one goal only : to infer or guess how
the mental apparatus is constructed and what forces interplay and counter-
act in it.

see E Jones Life and Work of Sigmund Freud 1953 (London: Hogarth Press) vol 1

9 [Poets] are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because
they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

60 Robert Frost

Robert Frost 1874-1963

1 Did I see it go by.

That Millikan mote?

Well, I said that I did.

I made a good try.

But I’m no one to quote
If I have a defect
It’s a wish to comply
And see as I’m bid.

I rather suspect
All I saw was the lid
Going over my eye,

I honestly think
All I saw was a wink.

[On being asked to look at Millikan's oil-drop experiment for determining the charge on the
electron]

A Wish to Comply in Complete Poems of Robert Frost 1951 (London: Cape and New York: Holt.
Rinehart and Winston) © Robert Frost (© Lesley Frost Ballentine)

2 Some say the world will end in fire.

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.

Fire and Ice in The Poetry of Robert Frost 1969 (London: Cape and New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston) © Robert Frost (© Lesley Frost Ballentine)

3 The telescope at one end of his beat.

And at the other end the microscope.

Two instruments of nearly equal hope, . . .

The Rear m The Poetry of Robert Frost 1969 (London: Cape and New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston) © Robert Frost (© Lesley Frost Ballentine)

Richard Buckminster Fuller 1 895-

4 I am a passenger on the spaceship. Earth.

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth 1 969 (New York: Pocket Books). See also Barbara Ward
Spaceship Earth 1966 (New York: Columbia UP)

Dennis Gabor 1900-

5 The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no
longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but
the reparation of the evils and damages wrought by the technology of
yesterday.

innovations: Scientific. Technological and Social 1970 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

6 Short of a compulsory humanistic indoctrination of all scientists and
engineers, with a ‘Hippocratic oath’ of never using their brains to kill
people, I believe that the best makeshift solution at present is to give the
alpha-minuses alternative outlets for their dangerous brain-power, and this
may well be provided by space research.

Inventing the Future (London: Seeker & Warburg)

1

61

Galileo Galilei

1 Till now man has been up against Nature; from now on he will be up
against his own nature.

Inventing the Future (London: Seeker & Warburg)

John Kenneth Galbraith 1908-

2 The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in
taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then,
through appropriate organisation, arranging to have their knowledge
combined with that of other specialised but equally ordinary men. This
dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less
inspiring, is far more predictable.

The New Industrial State 1967 (London: Hamish Hamilton) © J K Galbraith. 1967

Galileo Galilei 1564-1642

3 I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late
Vicenzio Galilei of Florence, aged
seventy years, being brought per-
sonally to judgment, and kneeling
before you, Most Eminent and Most
Reverend Lords Cardinals, General
Inquisitors of the Universal Chris-
tian Commonwealth against here-
tical depravity, having before my
eyes the Holy Gospels which I touch
with my own hands, swear that I
have always believed, and, with the
help of God, will in future believe,
every article which the Holy Catho-
lic and Apostolic Church of Rome
holds, teaches, and preaches. But
because I have been enjoined, by
this Holy Office, altogether to aban-
don the false opinion which main-
tains that the Sun is the centre and immovable, and forbidden to hold,
defend, or teach, the said false doctrine in any manner ... I am willing to
remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of every Catholic Chris-
tian, this vehement suspicion rightly entertained towards me, therefore,
with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I abjure, curse, and detest the said
errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect contrary to the
said Holy Church; and I swear that I will never more in future say, or
assert anything, verbally or in writing, which may give rise to a similar
suspicion of me; but that if I shall know any heretic, or anyone suspected
of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor and
Ordinary of the place in which I may be. I swear, moreover, and promise
that I will fulfil and observe fully all the penances which have been or shall
be laid on me by this Holy Office. But if it shall happen that I violate any
of my said promises, oaths, and protestations (which God avert), I subject
myself to all the pains and punishments which have been decreed and
promulgated by the sacred canons and other general and particular

62 Galileo Galilei

constitutions against delinquents of this description. So, may God help me,
and his Holy Gospels, which I touch with my own hands, I, the above
named Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself
as above; and, in witness thereof, with my own hand have subscribed this
present writing of my abjuration, which I have recited word for word,
in J J Fahie Galileo, His Life and Work 1903

1 In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the
humble reasoning of a single individual.

in Arago's Eulogy of Laplace Smithsonian Report, 1874

2 Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our gaze —

I mean the universe — but we cannot understand if we do not first learn the
language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written
in the mathematical language, and the symbo 1 s are triangles, circles and
other geometrical figures, without the help of which it is impossible to
conceive a single word of it, and without which one wanders in vain
through a dark labyrinth.

Opera 4

3 Take note, theologians, that in your desire to make matters of faith out of
propositions relating to the fixity of sun and earth you run the risk of
eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the
earth to stand still and the sun to change position — eventually, I say, at
such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth
moves and the sun stands still.

Dialogue

[Sir] Francis Galton 1822-1911

4 Whenever you can, count.

in The World of Mathematics ed J R Newman, 1956 (New York: Simon & Schuster)

5 [Statistics are] the only tools by which an opening can be cut through the
formidable thicket of difficulties that bars the path of those who pursue the
Science of Man.

in Karl Pearson The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton 1914 (London: Cambridge UP)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 1869-1948

6 [Asked, on his arrival in Europe, what he thought of Western civilisation]
‘I think it would be an excellent idea’.

Attributed

Karl Friedrich Gauss 1777-1855

7 ... durch planmassiges Tattonieren.

. . . through systematic feeling about.

[Asked on how he came upon his theorems]

8 God does arithmetic.

Attributed

63 Alien Ginsberg

George III 1738-1820

1 I spend money on war because it is necessary, but to spend it on science,
that is pleasant to me.

[To Lalande]

in R A Gregory Discovery . . . 1918 (London: Macmillan)

Hans Heinrich Gerth and Charles Wright Mills 1908- and 1916-1962

2 Precisely because of their specialization and knowledge, the scientist and
technician are among the most easily used and coordinated of groups in
modern society . . . the very rigor of their training typically makes them the
easy dupes of men wise in political ways.

Character & Social Structure 1954 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

Al-Ghazali 1058-1111

3 There is no hope in returning to a traditional faith after it has once been
abandoned, since the essential condition in the holder of a traditional faith
is that he should not know that he is a traditionalist.

in E R Dodds The Greeks and the Irrationally (Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press)

Edward Gibbon 1737-1794

4 Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand
volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations; and from the productions
which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter
were designed for use rather than for ostentation. (By each of his concu-
bines, the younger Gordian left three or four children. His literary produc-
tions, though less numerous, were by no means contemptible.)

[Roman Emperor, died 238]

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

5 The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest of navigators

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

William Gilbert 1540-1603

6 Look for knowledge not in books but in things themselves.

De Magnete

Allen Ginsberg 1926-

7 The war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement
language used

like magic for power on the planet
Black Magic language
formulas for reality —

Communism is a 9 letter word
used by inferior magicians
with the wrong alchemical formula for transforming
earth into gold

funky warlocks operating on guesswork,

64 Allen Ginsberg

hand-me-down mandrake terminology.

Wichita Vortex Sutra in The East- side Scene: American Poetry 1960-65 ed A De Loach, 1972
(New York: Doubleday)

Thomas Favill Gladwin 1917—

1 No style of thinking will survive which cannot produce a usable product
when survival is at stake.

[On the navigation of the Puluwat Islanders]

East is a Big Bird: Navigation and Logic on Puluwat Atoll 1970 (Cambridge. Mass: Harvard UP)

Max Gluckman 191 1—

2 A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go
beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.

Politics, Law and Ritual 1965 (New York: Mentor)

Kurt Goedel 1906-

3 It is impossible to demonstrate the non-contradictoriness of a logical
mathematic system using only the means offered by the system itself.
[Paraphrased]

[See E Nagel and J R Newman Goede/'s Proof ]

Monatshefte fur Mathematik und Physik, Leipzig 1 931 . ppl 73-98

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832

4 (Laboratorium im Sinne des Mittelalters, weitlaufige unbehilfliche Apparate
zu phantastischen Zwecken.)

Wagner: Es wird ein Mensch gemacht.

. . . nun lasst sich wirklich hoffen,

Dass, wenn wir aus viel hundert Stoffen

Dureh Mischung — derm auf Mischung kommt es an —

Den Menschenstojf gemachlich komponieren,

In einen Kolben verlutieren
Und ihn gehorig kohobieren
So ist das Werk im stillen abgetan.

Es wird! Die Masse regt sich klarer!

Die Uberzeugung wahrer, wahrer:

Was man an der Natur Geheimnisvolles pries.

Das wagen wir verstandig zu probieren,

Und was sie sonst organisieren liess
Das lassen wir kristallisieren.

Mephistopheles : Wer lange lebt, hat viel erfahren,

Nichts Neues kann fur ihn auf dieser Welt geschehn.

Ich habe schon in meinen Wanderjahren
Kristallisiertes Menschenvolk gesehn.

(Laboratory, after the style of the Middle Ages: extensive, unwieldy
apparatus, for fantastical purposes.)

Wagner: A human being in the making ....

Look, there’s a gleam —

Now hope may be fulfilled,

That hundreds of ingredients, mixed, distilled — -
And mixing is the secret — give us power

65

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The stuff of human nature to compound;

If in a limbeck we now seal it round
And cohobate with final care profound.

The finished work may crown this silent hour.

It works. The substance stirs, is turning clearer.

The truth of my conviction presses nearer:

The thing in Nature as high mystery prized,

This has our science probed beyond a doubt ;

What Nature by slow process organised,

That have we grasped, and crystallised it out.

Mephistopheles : He who lives long a host of things will know,
The world affords him nothing new to see.

Much have I seen, in wandering to and fro,

Including crystallised humanity.

Faust II, Akt II. Transl Philip Wayne. 1949 (London: Penguin Classics)

1 ‘Ins Innre der Natur ’ —

O du Philister —

Natur hat weder Kern
Noch Schale.

‘In the inside of Nature’ —

O you Philistines —

Nature has neither kernel
Nor shell.

Allerdings. Dem Physiker 1 81 9/20

2 ‘Questions of science,’ remarked Goethe, ‘are very frequently career ques-
tions. A single discovery may make a man famous and lay the foundations
of his fortunes as a citizen .... Every newly observed phenomenon is a
discovery, every discovery is property. Touch a man’s property and his
passions are easily aroused.’

in J P Eckerman Conversations with Goethe 21 December 1823

3 Auf theoretischem Feld ist weiter nichts mehr zu finden; Aber der praktische
Satz gilt doch; Du kannst, denn du so 1 1st.

In the theoretical field there is no more to be found ; but the practical
dictum is still valid; you can, for you ought.

Xenien 1797 (jointly with Schiller)

4 Der kleine Gott . ... In jeden Quark begrdbt er seine Nase.

God pushes his nose into all kinds of rubbish.

[See Scientific American July 1 968 for the history of the word 'quark']

Faust (Frankfurt: Insel-Verlag) Prologue

5 Faust: Geschrieben steht: 'Im Anfang war das Wort!’

Hier stock ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?

Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmoglich schatzen,

Ich muss es anders iibersetzen,

Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.

Geschrieben steht: ‘Im Anfang war der Sinn.’

Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile,

66

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(

Dass deine Feder sich nicht iibereile! 1st es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und
schafft ?

Es sollte stehn: ‘lm Anfang war die Kraft!’

Dock, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe,

Schon warnt mich was, dass ich dabei nicht bleibe.

Mir hilft der Geist! Auf einmal seh ich Rat
Und schreib getrost: ‘Im Anfang war die Tat!’

Faust: ‘Tis writ: ‘In the beginning was the Word!’

I pause, to wonder what is here inferred?

The Word I cannot set supremely high.

A new translation I will try.

I read, if by the spirit I am taught,

This sense: ‘In the beginning was the Thought.’

This opening I need to weigh again,

Or sense may suffer from a hasty pen.

Does Thought create, and work, and rule the hour?

’Twere best: ‘In the beginning was the Power!’

Yet, while the pen is urged with willing fingers,

A sense of doubt and hesitancy lingers.

The spirit come to guide me in my need,

I write, ‘In the beginning was the Deed!’

Faust I. Transl Philip Wayne. 1949 (London: Penguin Classics)

1 Doch, der den Augenblick ergreift.

Das ist der rechte Mann.

He who seizes the right moment,

Is the right man.

Faust I, iii

2 The history of science is science itself: the history of the individual, the
individual.

Mineralogy and Geology

3 Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

Maxims and Reflections I

4 Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living
by it, and they worship error when it affords them a subsistence.

in J P Eckerman Conversations with Goethe 15 October 1825

Brian Carey Goodwin 1931—

(

5 The discovery of appropriate variables for biology is itself an act of
creation.

in Towards a Theoretical Biology ed C H Waddington, 1969 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP)

Robert Ranke Graves 1895-

6 ‘The sum of all the parts of Such —
Of each laboratory scene —

l

67

[57r] Richard Arman Gregory

Is such.’ While Science means this much
And means no more, why, let it mean !

But were the science-men to find
Some animating principle
Which gave synthetic Such a mind
Vital, though metaphysical —

To Such, such an event, I think
Would cause unscientific pain:

Science, appalled by thought, would shrink
To its component parts again.

Synthetic Such (London: Watts)

1 Myth, then, is a dramatic shorthand record of such matters as invasions,
migrations, dynastic changes, admissions of foreign cults, and social
reforms.

Introduction to the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology 1959 (London: Hamlyn)

2 Thought comes often clad in the strangest clothing:

So Kekule the chemist watched the weird rout

Of eager atom-serpents writhing in and out
And waltzing tail to mouth. In that absurd guise
Appeared benzene and aniline, their drugs and their dyes.

Difficult Questions. Easy Answers 1972 (London: Cassell)

3 To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies
the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane
system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say,

a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place
names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but
the weather or the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is
usual in this barbaric age).

Thomas Gray 1716-1771

4 Alas, regardless of their doom,

The little victims play !

No sense have they of ills to come.

Nor care beyond today.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College

5 Fair science frown’d not on his humble birth,

And melancholy mark’d him for her own.

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard

[Sir] Richard Arman Gregory 1864-1952

6 Science is not to be regarded merely as a storehouse of facts to be used for
material purposes, but as one of the great human endeavours to be ranked
with arts and religion as the guide and expression of man’s fearless quest
for truth.

68 Richard Langton Gregory

Richard Langton Gregory 1923—

1 On how so little information controls so much behaviour.

in Towards a Theoretical Biology ed C H Waddington, 1969 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP)

Murray Christopher Grieve [Hugh McDiarmid] 1 892—

2 Perchance the best chance of reproducing the ancient Greek temperament
would be to cross the Scots with the Chinese.

Lucky Poet “\ 943 (London: Methuen)

[General] Leslie Richard Groves 1896-1970

3 [Officer in command of the US Atomic Bomb Installations] Compart-

mentalization of knowledge, to me, was the very heart of security. My rule
was simple and not capable of misinterpretation — each man should know
everything he needed to know to do his job and nothing else.

[Almost the classic recipe for preventing originality]

Now it can be told 1962 (New York: Harper & Row)

Ernesto [Che] Guevara 1928-1967

4 When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as
that of a physicist or a biologist who is asked if he is a ‘Newtonian’, or if
he is a ‘Pasteurian’.

in Radical Currents in Contemporary Philosophy ed David DeGrood, 1971 (St Louis, Mo: Warren
Green)

Ernst Heinrich Haeckel 1834-1919

5 God . . . [is] ... a gaseous vertebrate.

The Riddle of the Universe

6 Ontogeny recapitulates phytogeny. [In full] Ontogenesis, or the develop-
ment of the individual is a short and quick recapitulation of phylogenesis,
of the development of the tribe to which it belongs, determined by the
laws of inheritance and adaptation.

The History of Creation 1868

[Lord] Hailsham [Quintin Hogg] 1907-

7 None the less I am, so far as I know, the first, and possibly the only
Minister for Science (or of Science for that matter) in the Universe . . .

[There was at least one other — in India]

Science and Politics 1963 (London: Faber & Faber)

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane 1892-1964

8 Cancer’s a Funny Thing:

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,

Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact,

Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked . . .

[Written while mortally ill with cancer]

in Ronald Clark JBS 1968 (London: Hodder & Stoughton)

69 John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

1 The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the
servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has
become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.

Daedalus, or science and the future 1923 (London: Kegan Paul)

2 I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising
than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is
not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

Possible Worlds and Other Papers 1 927 (London: Chatto & Windus)

3 I’d lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.

New Scientist 8 August 1 974

4 In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the
facts under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same
kind. The catch in this criterion lies in the word ‘simplest’. It is really an
aesthetic canon such as we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or
painting. The layman finds such a law as djc/d t = K(d 2 xjdy 2 ) much less
simple than ‘it oozes’, of which it is the mathematical statement. The
physicist reverses this judgment, and his statement is certainly the more
fruitful of the two, so far as prediction is concerned. It is, however, a
statement about something very unfamiliar to the plain man, namely, the
rate of change of a rate of change.

Science and theology as art forms in Possible Worlds 1 927 (London: Chatto 8t Windus)

5 Religion is a way of life and an attitude to the universe. It brings man into
closer touch with the inner nature of reality. Statements of fact made in
its name are untrue in detail, but often contain some truth at their core.
Science is also a way of life and an attitude to the universe. It is concerned
with everything but the nature of reality. Statements of fact made in its
name are generally right in detail, but can only reveal the form and not the
real nature of existence. The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories
both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements
of ultimate fact, but as art forms.

Science and theology as art forms in Possible Worlds 1 927 (London: Chatto & Windus)

6 Religion is still parasitic in the interstices of our knowledge which have not
yet been filled. Like bed-bugs in the cracks of walls and furniture, miracles
lurk in the lacunae of science. The scientist plasters up these cracks in our
knowledge; the more militant Rationalist swats the bugs in the open. Both
have their proper sphere and they should realise that they are allies.

Science and Life: Essays of a Rationalist^^ (London: Pemberton and Barrie & Rockliff)

7 A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and
destroy mathematical physics, as the latter has destroyed geometry.

Daedalus, or science and the future 1 923 (London: Kegan Paul)

8 We are part of history ourselves, and we cannot avoid the consequences of
being unable to think impartially.

Heredity and Politics 1938 (London: Allen & Unwin)

70

John Bnrdon Sanderson Haldane

1 Why cannot people learn to speak the truth? I have, I think, taught two,
perhaps three, Indian colleagues to do so. It will probably wreck their
careers.

in Ronald Clark JBS 1968 (London: Hodder & Stoughton)

Stephen Hales 1677-1761

2 Since we are assured that the all-wise Creator has observed the most exact
proportions, of number, weight and measure, in the make of all things, the
most likely way therefore, to get any insight into the nature of those parts
of the creation, which come within our observation, must in all reason be to
number, weigh and measure.

Vegetable Staticks Introduction

John Hall 17th Century
3 If that this thing we call the world
By chance on atoms was begot
Which though in ceaseless motion whirled
Yet weary not
How doth it prove
Thou art so fair and I in love.

Epicurean Ode

[Sir] William Rowan Hamilton 1805-1865

4 /2 =y2 = kJ = ijk = -1.

[Engraved by him on a stone of Brougham Bridge, over the Royal Canal, Dublin, on 16 October
1863, where the idea of quaternions struck him]

See John Milton Paradise Lost v, 181 : 'ye Elements . . . that in quaternion run'.

I

Godfrey Harold Hardy 1877-1947

5 ... a science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the
existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes
the destruction of human life.

A Mathematician's Apology 1941 (London: Cambridge UP)

6 Beauty is the first test ; there is no permanent place in the world for ugly
mathematics.

A Mathematician's Apology 1941 (London: Cambridge UP)

7 I have never done anything ‘useful’. No discovery of mine has made, or is
likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to
the amenity of the world .... Judged by all practical standards, the value
of my mathematical life is nil ; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow.

I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of complete triviality, that I
may be judged to have created something is undeniable; the question is
about its value.

A Mathematician's Apology 1941 (London: Cambridge UP)

8 There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than

that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, \

71

Ernst Heinkel

appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

A Mathematician's Apology 1941 (London: Cambridge UP)

[Sir] William Bate Hardy 1864-1934

1 [To Sir Henry Tizard] You know, this applied science is just as interesting
as pure science, and what’s more it’s a damned sight more difficult.

Sir Henry Tizard Haldane Memorial Lecture Birkbeck College, University of London. 1955

Herbert Amory Hare 1862-1931

2 At first it is impossible for the novice to cast aside the minor symptoms,
which the patient emphasises as his major ones, and to perceive clearly
that one or two facts that have been belittled in the narration of the story
of the illness are in reality the stalk about which everything in the case
must be made to cluster.

Practical Diagnosis 1899 (Philadelphia, Pa: Lea Bros)

William Harvey 1578-1657

3 Ex ovo omnia.

Everything from an egg.

De Generatione Anima/ium London, 1 651 , Frontispiece. See I B Cohen Changing Perspectives in
the History of Science. Essays in Honour of Joseph Needham ed M Teich and R Young, 1973
(London: Heinemann)

H G [Blondie] Hasler 1914-

4 You cannot have the success without the failures.

[Organiser of the single-handed Atlantic yacht race]

The Observer 7 July 1 968

Stephen William Hawking 1942-

5 God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the dice where they
cannot be seen.

[See Albert Einstein]

Nature 1 975 257 362

Friedrich August von Hayek 1 899-

6 There are no better terms available to describe this difference between the
approach of the natural and the social sciences than to call the former
‘objective’ and the latter ‘subjective’.

The Counter-Revolution of Science 1952 (New York: Free Press)

Oliver Heaviside 1850-1925

7 [Criticised for using formal mathematical manipulations, without under-
standing how they worked] Should I refuse a good dinner simply because I
do not understand the processes of digestion?

[The inventor of the operational calculus and predictor of the Cherenkov effect. Now at last his
reputation is increasing to a juster estimate]

Ernst Heinkel 1888-1958

8 [Of Dr Ferdinand Porsche, the automobile engineer] He is a very amiable

72 Ernst Heinkel

man but let me give you this advice. You must shut him up in a cage with
seven locks and let him design his engine inside it. Let him hand you the
blueprints through the bars. But for heaven’s sake don’t ever let him see the
drawing or the engine again. Otherwise he’ll ruin you.

[Modifications to engineering designs are what cost the money]

He 1000 1956 (London: Hutchinson)

Werner Heisenberg 1901-1976

1 Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of
the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed
to our method of questioning.

Physics and Philosophy 1959 (London: Allen & Unwin)

2 Science clears the fields on which technology can build.

3 An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be
made in his subject, and how to avoid them.

Physics and Beyond ed R N Anshen, 1971 (New York: Harper & Row)

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz 1821-1894

4 Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility,
may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.

Academic discourse Heidelberg, 1862

Heraclitus [of Ephesus] ca 550-475 bc

5 We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all
things come into being and pass away through strife.

in G S Kirk Heraclitus, The Cosmic Fragments 1954 (London: Cambridge UP)

6 All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things, even as wares
for gold and gold for wares.

in S F Mason A History of the Sciences 1953 (London: Routledge 8t Kegan Paul)

7 If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to
be sought out, and difficult.

in Diels Fragmente der Vorsokratiker 1st edn, no. 18

Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen 1812-1870

8 The circulation of accurate and meaningful natural science ideas is of vital
concern to our age. These are abundant in science but scarce in society.
They should be rendered accessible to all . . . without education in natural
science it is impossible to develop a strong intellect .... By placing natural
science at the beginning of a course of education we would cleanse the
child’s mind of all prejudices; we would raise him on healthful food until
the time when, strong of intellect . . . and ready, he discovers the world of
man and history which opens the door for direct participation in the issues
of the day.

9 Man and science are two concave mirrors continually reflecting each other.

in Science and Humanity 1 968 (Moscow: Znanie)

73 Hippocrates [of Cos]

Hermann Hesse 1877-1962

1 You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which
nothing but laws and formulae exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time,
no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical
present.

The Glass Bead Game 1943 (London: Cape)

David Hilbert 1862-1943

2 One hears a good deal nowadays of the hostility between science and tech-
nology. I don’t think that is true, gentlemen. I am quite sure that it isn’t
true, gentlemen. It almost certainly isn’t true. It really can’t be true.

Sie haben ja gar nichts mit einander zu tun. [They have nothing whatever to
do with one another.]

in J R Oppenheimer Physics in the Contemporary World (Cambridge. Mass: Harvard UP)

3 Physics is much too hard for physicists.

in Constance Reid Hilbert 1970 (London: Allen & Unwin)

4 Wir miissen wissen. Wir werden wissen.

We must know. We will know.

[Speech in Konigsberg. 1930. Now on his tomb in Gottingen]
in Constance Reid Hilbert 1970 (London: Allen & Unwin)

Joel Henry Hildebrand 1881 —

5 A child of the new generation
Refused to learn multiplication.

He said ‘Don’t conclude

That I’m stupid or rude;

I am simply without motivation.’

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1 970, Winter. p230

[Sir] Cyril Hinshelwood 1897-1967

6 The creative scientist is in fact usually more concerned with the relations of
things to one another than with the precise verbal analysis of what these
things are. He seeks a representation of the world which continually grows
by an extension or transformation of what is there already. Thus what
many scientists are really after is the adventure of discovery itself.

British Association for the Advancement of Science Presidential Address. Cambridge, 1 965

Hippocrates [of Cos] ca 460-co 357 bc

7 Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future.

Epidemics Book I. section 1 1

8 I swear by Apollo the physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and
by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry
out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To
hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner
in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to
consider his family as my own brothers and to teach them this art, if they

74 Hippocrates [of Cos ]

want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruc-
tion, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and
to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody
else. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judg-
ment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I
administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest
such a course. Similarly, I will not give a woman a pessary to cause
abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both in my life and my art. I will
not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone but I will give
place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I
will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-
doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman,
bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my
profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if
it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge holding
such things to be holy secret. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it
not, may I gain for ever reputation among all men for my life and for my
art; but if I transgress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.

[Great attention is paid to the trade union aspects of the craft and the demarcation between
physicians and surgeons]

The Hippocratic Oath

1 Life is short, the Art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous,
judgment difficult. The physician must be ready, not only to do his duty
himself, but also to secure the co-operation of the patient, of the attendants
and of externals.

Aphorisms I. 1

Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679

2 Nature (the Art whereby God hath made and governs the World) is by the
Art of man, as in many other things, to in this imitated, that it can make
an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning
whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all
Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a
watch) have artificial life. For what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the
Nerves, but so many Strings; and the joints, but so many Wheels, giving
motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes
yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, Man.
For by Art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth, or
State (in Latin Civitas ) which is but an artificial man; though of greater
stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it
was intended.

Leviathan Introduction, 1651

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm 1917—

3 There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do
as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their
activities.

New York Review of Books XV. 19 November 1970

4 War has been the most convenient pseudo-solution for the problems of

75 Miroslav Holub

twentieth-century capitalism. It provides the incentives to modernisation
and technological revolution which the market and the pursuit of profit do
only fitfully and by accident, it makes the unthinkable (such as votes for
women and the abolition of unemployment) not merely thinkable but
practicable, in the field of policy and administration as well as mass murder.
What is equally important, it can re-create communities of men and give
a temporary sense to their lives by uniting them against foreigners and
outsiders. This is an achievement beyond the power of the private enterprise
economy, whose characteristic is that it tends to do precisely the opposite,
when left to itself.

The Observer Review 26 May 1 968

[Baron] Paul Heinrich Dietrich d’Hoibach 1723-1789
1 The unhappiness of man is due to his ignorance of nature.

The System of Nature 1770

Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-1894

2 A lady’s portrait has been known to come out of the finishing-artist’s room
ten years younger than when it left the camera. But try to mend a stereo-
graph and you will find the difference. Your marks and patches float above
the picture and never identify themselves with it. No woman may be de-
clared youthful on the strength of a single photograph; but if the stereo-
scopic twins say she is young, let her be so acknowledged.

Sun painting in Atlantic Monthly July 1 861

3 Science is the topography of ignorance.

Medical Essays p21 1

4 Year after year held the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil,

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through.

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last found home, and knew the old no more.

[The Nautilus]

Gerald Holton 1922—

5 During a meeting at which a number of great physicists were to give first-
hand accounts of their epoch-making discoveries, the chairman opened the
proceedings with the remark: ‘Today we are privileged to sit side-by-side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand’.

in D J de S Price Little Science, Big Science pi . from Gerald Holton American Journal of
Physics 1 961 29 805

Miroslav Holub 1923—

6 With one bold stroke

he killed the circle, tangent

and point of intersection in infinity.

76 Miroslav Holub

On penalty
of quartering
he banned numbers
from three up.

Now in Syracuse

he heads a school of philosophers,

Squats on his halberd

for another thousand years

and writes :

one, two

one, two

one, two

one, two.

[Continental armies march 'one. two', rather than 'left, right'.

Holub is a Czechoslovak clinical pathologist whose poems mix scientific, political and
philosophical images]

The Corporal who killed Archimedes in New Scientist 24 July 1969

Robert Hooke 1635-1703

1 The business and design of the Royal Society is— to improve the knowledge
of natural things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanick practices,
Engynes and Inventions by Experiments— (not meddling with Divinity,
Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetorick or Logick) . . . .' All
to advance the glory of God, the honour of the King ... the benefit of his
Kingdom, and the general good of mankind.

1663. In O R Weld A History of the Royal Society London. 1848. 1. 146

2 ‘The True Theory of Elasticity or Springiness’ (1676) — CEIINOSSITTUU.

[Anagram. Revealed in De Potentia Restitutiva or of a spring (1679) as UT TENSIO, S/C U/S (as
the extension, so the force). One of the ways of establishing priority in a discovery]

3 The truth is, the science of Nature has been already too long made only a
work of the brain and the fancy. It is now high time that it should return
to the plainness and soundness of observations on material and obvious
things.

Micrographia 1 665

Horace [Q Horatius Flaccus] 65-8 bc

4 Ac ne forte roges, quo me duce, quolare tuter
Nullius addict us iurare in verba magistri.

... in the word of no master am I bound to believe.

[Hence nullius in verba — the motto of the Royal Society]

5 Persicos odi, puer, apparatus.

Persian luxury, boy, I hate.

Boy. Those Persians are lousy with apparatus (A L Mackay’s translation).

[See Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1 972. Summer. pp483-901
Odes I. 38.1 J

6 Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.

Though you drive away Nature with a pitchfork she always returns.

Epistles I, x. 24

77

Aldous Leonard Huxley

1 Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.

He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

Ars Poetica 343

Victor Hugo 1802-1885

2 Je crois peu a la science des savants betes.

I don’t think much of the science of the beastly scientists.

3 Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

Things of the Infinite: Intellectual Autobiography transl L O'Rourke, 1907 (New York: Funk &
Wagnalls)

David Hume 1711-1776

4 If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for
instance; let us ask, ‘Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning
quantity or number?’ No. ‘Does it contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matter of fact and existence?’ No. Commit it then to the flames:
for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Treatise Concerning Human Understanding

Hu Shih 1891-1962

5 Contact with strange civilizations brings new standards of value, with
which the native culture is re-examined and re-evaluated, and conscious
reformation and regeneration are the natural outcome.

6 Even my own name bears witness to the great vogue of evolutionism in
China. I remember distinctly the morning when I asked my second brother
to suggest a literary name for me. After only a moment’s reflection, he
said, ‘How about the word shih (fitness) in the phrase “survival of the
fittest”?’ I agreed, and first using it as a nom de plume, finally adopted it in
1910 as my name.

Living Philosophies, a Series of Intimate Credos 1931 (New York: Simon & Schuster)

Aldous Leonard Huxley 1894-1963

7 If, O my Lesbia, I should commit.

Not fornication, dear, but suicide, . . .

[Elegant verse on a mistaken belief of the ancients that male corpses floated face up and female
corpses face down]

Second Philosopher's Song in Collected Poetry of Aldous Huxley 1971 (London: Chatto &
Windus)

8 While I have been fumbling over books

And thinking about God and the Devil and all.

Other young men have been battling with the days
And others have been kissing the beautiful women.

The Life Theoretic in Collected Poetry of Aldous Huxley 1971 (London: Chatto & Windus)

9 The difference between a piece of stone and an atom is that an atom is
highly organised, whereas the stone is not. The atom is a pattern, and the
molecule is a pattern, and the crystal is a pattern ; but the stone, although it
is made up of these patterns, is just a mere confusion. It’s only when life

78 Aldous Leonard Huxley

appears that you begin to get organisation on a larger scale. Life takes the
atoms and molecules and crystals; but, instead of making a mess of them
like the stone, it combines them into new and more elaborate patterns of
its own.

Time Must Have a Stop 1945 (London: Chatto & Windus) ch 14

1 Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may
be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk
nonsense.

Time Must Have a Stop 1945 (London: Chatto & Windus) ch 30

2 ‘If you look up “Intelligence” in the new volumes of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica,' he had said, ‘you’ll find it classified under the following three
heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military.
My stepfather’s a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Military.’

Point Counter Point 1928 (London: Chatto & Windus)

Thomas Henry Huxley 1825-1895

3 The great end of life is not Knowledge but Action.

[Marx was saying much the same thing at the same time]

Technical Education 1 877

4 The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an
ugly fact.

[There is an interesting philosophical problem as to the nature of the satisfactions obtained from a
scientific insight later found to be fallacious]

Biogenesis and Abiogenesis. Collected Essays viii

5 If all the books in the world except the Philosophical Transactions were
destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would
remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two
centuries would be largely, though incompletely, recorded.

6 If only I could break my leg, what a lot of scientific work I could do.

in Cyril Bibby T H Huxley (London: Cambridge UP)

7 It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as
superstitions.

The coming of age of the Origin of Species in Science and Culture xii

8 It looks as if the scientific, like other revolutions, meant to devour its own
children; as if the growth of science tended to overwhelm its votaries; as if
the man of science of the future were condemned to diminish into a narrow
specialist as time goes on.

in The Essence ofT H Huxley ed Cyril Bibby. 1967 (London: Macmillan)

9 Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from
the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit : and its methods
differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman’s cut and
thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

The Method of Zadig in Collected Essays IV

79 Ibn Khaldun

1 The State lives in a glasshouse, we see what it tries to do, and all its fail-
ures, partial or total, are made the most of. But private enterprise is
sheltered under good opaque bricks and mortar. The public rarely knows
what it tries to do, and only hears of failures when they are gross and
patent to all the world.

Administrative Nihilism 1878

2 That fashioning by Nature of a picture of herself, in the mind of man,
which we call the progress of Science ....

Nature 1869 1 10

3 This seems to be one of the many cases in which the admitted accuracy of
mathematical processes is allowed to throw a wholly inadmissible appear-
ance of authority over the results obtained by them. Mathematics may be
compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any
degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what
you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat
flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out
of loose data.

[No doubt that this elegant statement of the computer scientist's maxim 'garbage in, garbage
out', has still earlier versions]

Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, London 1869 25 38

4 Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

Text on his memorial

5 [Asked by Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, whether he traced his
descent from an ape on his mother’s or his father’s side] If the question is
put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man
highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and
yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of
introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion — I unhesitatingly
affirm my preference for the ape.

[Commemorated by a plate in the University Museum. Oxford]

British Association Meeting University Museum, Oxford, 1860

6 [Of the opening ceremony of Johns Hopkins University] It was bad enough
to invite Huxley. It were better to have asked God to be present. It would
have been absurd to ask them both.

in C Bibby Scientist Extraordinary — T H Huxley 1972 (Oxford: Pergamon)

7 [On first reading Darwin’s Origin of Species ] How extremely stupid not to
have thought of that !

Ibn Khaldun 1332-1406

8 Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one’s mind right. All its proofs
are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into
geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the
mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into
error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires

80 Ibn Khaldun

intelligence. It has been assumed that the following statement was written
upon Plato’s door: ‘No one who is not a geometrician may enter our house’.

The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History N J Da wood's abridgement of F Rosenthal's
translation. 1967 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

1 It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars
both in the religious and in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs.

The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History N J Dawood's abridgement of F Rosenthal's
translation. 1967 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

2 Scientific instruction is a craft. This is because skill in a science, knowledge
of its diverse aspects, and mastery of it are the result of a habit .... The
easiest method of acquiring the scientific habit is through acquiring the
ability to express oneself clearly in discussing and disputing scientific prob-
lems. This is what clarifies their import and makes them understandable.

The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History N J Dawood's abridgement of F Rosenthal's
translation. 1967 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

3 When the Muslims conquered Persia and came upon an indescribably large
number of books and scientific papers, Sa’d b. Abi Waqqas wrote to ’Umar
b. al-Khattab, asking him for permission to take them and distribute them
as booty among the Muslims. On that occasion ’Umar wrote to him:

‘Throw them into the water. If what they contain is right guidance, God
has given us better guidance. If it is in error, God has protected us against
it’. Thus, they [the Muslims] threw them into the water or into the fire, and
the sciences of the Persians were lost and did not reach us.

[Abd-ar-Rahman Abu Zayd ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun]

The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History N J Dawood's abridgement of F Rosenthal's
translation. 1967 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

International Business Machines

4 Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.

[A slogan emerging during the student revolution at Berkeley in 1964]
Inscription on IBM card

Isidore of Seville ca 7th Century

5 Tolle numerum omnibus rebus et omnia pereunt.

Take from all things their number and all shall perish.

Jabir ibn Hayyan [Geber] 8th Century

6 The first essential in chemistry is that thou shouldst perform practical work
and conduct experiments, for he who performs not practical work nor
makes experiments will never attain to the least degree of mastery. But
thou, O my son, do thou experiment so that thou mayest acquire know-
ledge. Scientists delight not in abundance of material; they rejoice only in
the excellence of their experimental methods.

Probably The Discovery of Secrets attributed to Geber, 1892 (London: Geber Society)

Jalal al-Din [Rumi] 1207-1273

7 Man is God’s astrolabe. But it requires an astronomer to know the astro-

81 Samuel Johnson

labe. With that astrolabe what would an ordinary man know of the move-
ments of the circling heavens and the stations of the planets, their influ-
ences, transits, and so forth. But in the hands of the astronomer the astro-
labe is of great benefit, for he who knows himself knows his Lord. Just
as this copper astrolabe is the mirror of the heavens, so the human being is
the astrolabe of God. When God causes a man to have knowledge of Him
and to know Him and be familiar with Him, through the astrolabe of his
own being, he beholds moment by moment and flash by flash the mani-
festation of God and His infinite beauty and that beauty is never absent
from his mirror.

The Discourses of Rumi transl A J Arberry, 1961 (London: Murray)

William James 1842-1910

1 [Of innovations] . . . when a thing was new people said ‘It is not true’.
Later, when its truth became obvious, people said, ‘Anyway, it is not
important’, and when its importance could not be denied, people said,
‘Anyway, it is not new’.

in Lord Ritchie Calder Leonardo 1970 (London: Heinemann)

Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826

2 I could more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that
stones would fall from heaven.

1807. In Physics Bulletin 1968 19 225

3 If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be
obtained? Those by death are few: by resignation none.

[Usually quoted as: 'Few die. and none resign']

Letter to a Committee of the Merchants of New Haven. 1801

Francis [Lord] Jeffery 1773-1850

4 ‘Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with
comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself.’

in H W Tilman Mischief in Patagonia 1966 (London: Cambridge UP)

[Pope] John XXIII 1881-1963

5 Nevertheless, in order to imbue civilisation with sound principles and

enliven it with the spirit of the gospel, it is not enough to be illumined with
the gift of faith and enkindled with the desire of forwarding a good cause.
For this end it is necessary to take an active part in the various organis-
ations and influence them from within. And since our present age is one of
outstanding scientific and technical progress and excellence, one will not
be able to enter these organisations and work effectively from within unless
he is scientifically competent, technically capable and skilled in the practice
of his own profession . . .

Encyclical Pacem in Terris 10 April 1963, part 5. Official transl by the Vatican Press Office

Samuel Johnson 1 709-1 784

6 Boswell; ‘Is not the Giant’s Causeway worth seeing?’

82 Samuel Johnson

Johnson: ‘Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.’

Boswell's Life of Johnson 12 October 1779

1 Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim ; and when you are calcu-
lating, calculate.

Boswell's Life of Johnson 26 April 1776

2 Network: Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with
interstices between the intersections.

Dictionary of the English Language

3 The Sciences having long seen their votaries labouring for the benefit of
mankind without reward, put up their petition to Jupiter for a more
equitable distribution of riches and honour .... A synod of the celestials
was therefore convened, in which it was resolved, that Patronage should
descend to the assistance of the Sciences.

[Science was then beginning to become a profession]

Rambler 29 January 1 751 . no. 9

4 Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an under-
standing.

Boswell's Life of Johnson 19June1784

Benjamin Jonson 1573-1637

5 Surly: The egg’s ordained by Nature to that end, and is a chicken in
potentia.

Subtle: The same we say of lead and other metals, which would be gold if
they had time.

Mammon : And that our art doth further.

The Alchemist II, 2

Bertrand de Jouvenel 1903—

6 Year by year we are becoming better equipped to accomplish the things we
are striving for. But what are we actually striving for?

Zukunftsplane. Ritt auf dem Tiger in Der Spiegel 1 970, no. 1-2

Benjamin Jowett 1817-1893

7 One man is as good as another until he has written a book.

in E A Abbott and L Campbell Life and Letters of B Jowett 1 897, i

James Joyce 1882-1941

8 I am the greatest engineer who ever lived.

in Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore War and Peace in the Global Village (New York: Bantam)

Thomas Hughes Jukes 1906-

9 Very old are the rocks.

The pattern of life is not in their veins.

When the earth cooled, the great rains
came and the seas were filled.

83 Kalidasa

Slowly the molecules enmeshed in
ordered asymmetry.

A billion years passed, aeons of
trial and error.

The life message took form, a spiral,
a helix, repeating itself endlessly,

Swathed in protein, nurtured by
enzymes, sheltered in membranes,
laved by salt water, armored with
lime.

Shells glisten by the ocean marge,

Surf boils, sea mews cry, and the great wind
soughs in the cypress.

[Written by a biologist for his own book]

Molecules and Evolution 1966 (New York: Columbia UP)

Carl Gustav Jung 1875-1961

1 The hypothesis of a collective unconscious belongs to the class of ideas
that people at first find strange but soon come to possess and use as
familiar conceptions. This has been the case with the concept of the
unconscious in general. After the philosophical idea of the unconscious, in
the form presented chiefly by Carus and von Hartman, had gone down
under the overwhelming wave of materialism and empiricism, leaving
hardly a ripple behind, it gradually reappeared in the scientific domain of
medical psychology .... A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious
is undoubtedly personal. I call it the personal unconscious. But this personal
unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal
experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper
layer I call the collective unconscious ... it has contents and modes of
behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals
.... The contents of the collective unconscious, on the other hand, are
known as archetypes.

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious in Collected Works vol 9 (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul) part 1

2 We can never finally know. I simply believe that some part of the human
Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time.

The Guardian 1 9 July 1 975

Juvenal 1st Century

3 Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes, augur, schoenobates, medicus,
magus, omnia novit.

Grammarian, rhetorician, geometer, painter, trainer, soothsayer, rope-
dancer, physician, wizard — he knows everything.

Satires iii, 76

Kalidasa between 200 bc and ad 400

4 If a professor thinks what matters most
Is to have gained an academic post

84 Kalidasa

Where he can earn a livelihood, and then
Neglect research, let controversy rest,

He’s but a petty tradesman at the best.

Selling retail the work of other men.

Malavikagnimitra i.1 7. In Poems from the Sanskrit transl John Brough. 1 968 (London: Penguin)
no. 165. © John Brough. 1968

K’ang Yu-wei 1858-1927

1 In the age of One World, the power of the microscope will be one doesn’t
know how many times greater than that of [the instrument of] today.
[Viewed through the instrument of today] an ant looks like an elephant.
[Viewed through the instrument of] the future, the size of a microbe will be
like that of the great, skyborne p'eng bird.

Ta Tung Shu: The One-world Philosophy of K’ang Vu-we/1958 (London: Allen & Unwin)

Immanuel Kant 1724-1804

2 Concepts without factual content are empty ; sense data without concepts
are blind .... The understanding cannot see. The senses cannot think. By
their union only can knowledge be produced.

3 Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe,
the oftener and more steadily they are reflected on: the starry heavens
above me, and the moral law within me.

Critique of Pure Reason

4 Zweckmdssigkeit ohne Zweck.

85 Maurice George Kendall

Purposiveness without a controlling end.

[A characteristic of biological systems]

Critique of Judgment 1790

Peter Leonidovich Kapitsa 1 894-

1 On the flag of contemporary science there should be written in capital
letters the word — ORGANISATION.

2 The year that Rutherford died (1938) there disappeared forever the happy
days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth.
Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She
has become rich but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in
secrecy. I do not know whether Rutherford would continue to joke and
laugh as he used to.

Science Policy News, London 1 969 1 33

3 [When asked what the significance of the crocodile carved by Eric Gill on
the wall of the Royal Society Mond Laboratory was (crocodile, in fact,
was Kapitsa’s name for Rutherford)] The crocodile cannot turn its head.
Like science, it must always go forward with all-devouring jaws.

in A S Eve Rutherford 1 939 (London: Cambridge UP)

John Keats 1795-1821

4 Do not all charms fly

At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven :

We know her woof, her texture ; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,

Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,

Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
Unweave a rainbow.

Lamia 1820, II, lines 229-37

Keikitsu 1694-1761

5 Doko no jishaku mo Yoshiwara e muku.

From wherever it is the magnet points to the Yoshiwara (gay quarter).

Mutamagawa 1754

Thomas a Kempis 1380-1471

6 The humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than the deepest
search after science.

De Imitatione Christi part 1 , ch 3

Maurice George Kendall 1907-

7 But I do wish to propound one principle which is, so to speak, a kind of
Occam’s Electric Razor: We should not invoke any entities or forces to
explain mental phenomena if we can achieve an explanation in terms of a

86 Maurice George Kendall

possible electronic computer.

Review of the International Statistical Institute 1 966 34 1

John Fitzgerald Kennedy 1917-1963

1 First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more exciting,
or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range
exploration of space ; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accom-
plish.

[To Congress, 25 May 1961]

in John M Logsdon The Decision to go to the Moon 1970 (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press)

2 Scientists alone can establish the objectives of their research, but society,
in extending support to science, must take account of its own needs.

Address to the National Academy of Sciences, 1 963

Hugh Kenner 1923-

3 Each of us carries in his mind a phantom cube, by which to estimate the
orthodoxy of whatever we encounter in the world of space.

[This is perhaps more true than Kenner thought. The three semi-circular canals in the ear provide
us with built-in Cartesian axes]

Bucky 1973 (New York: Morrow)

Johannes Kepler 1571-1630

4 .... Why they are as they are, and not otherwise.

Mysterium Cosmographicum Preface

5 [Title page of Tertius inveniens ] A warning to sundry Theologos, Medicos,
and Philosophos, in particular to D Philippus Feselius, that they should
not, in their just repudiation of star-gazing superstition, throw out the child
with the bath and thus unknowingly act in contradiction to their profession

in C G Jung and W Pauli The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche 1955 (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul)

6 It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand
years for an observer.

in David Brewster Martyrs of Science or the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler 1841

7 Ubi materia, ibi geometria.

Where there is matter, there is geometry.

Charles Franklin Kettering 1876-1958

8 [Vice-president of General Motors] Bankers regard research as most danger-
ous and a thing that makes banking hazardous due to the rapid changes

it brings about in industry. (Address, 1927.)

in US National Resources Committee Technology and Planning Washington, 1937

John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946

9 [Of him] No one in our age was cleverer than Keynes nor made less

87 Rudyard Kipling

attempt to conceal it.

in R F Harrod The Life of John Maynard Keynes 1951 (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich)

1 The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which
ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of
our minds.

2 Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magi-
cians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which
looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those
who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10 000
years ago.

Address to the Royal Society Club, 1942

3 The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any
reward.

Snren Kiekegaard 1813-1855

4 Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the
compulsion to know is just like dipsomania, erotomania, homocidal mania,
in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all true that the
scientist goes after truth. It goes after him.

Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936

5 And your rooms at college was beastly — more like a whore’s than a man’s.

[A dying shipping tycoon explains his will to his more gently nurtured son]

The Mary Gloster in The Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling's Verse 1940 (London: Hodder &
Stoughton)

6 But remember please, the Law by which we live,

We are not built to comprehend a lie.

We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.

If you make a slip in handling us you die.

The Secret of the Machines in The Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling's Verse 1940 (London:
Hodder & Stoughton)

7 For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State,

They arrive at their conclusions — largely inarticulate.

Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none;

But sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done.

The Puzzler in The Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling's Verse 1940 (London: Hodder &
Stoughton)

8 Nothing in life has been made by man for man’s using
But it was shown long since to man in ages

Lost as the name of the maker of it,

Who received oppression and scorn for his wages —

Hate, avoidance, and scorn in his daily dealings —

Until he perished, wholly confounded.

More to be pitied than he are the wise
Souls which foresaw the evil of loosing

88 Rudyard Kipling

Knowledge or Art before time, and aborted
Noble devices and deep-wrought healings,

Lest offence should arise.

Heaven delivers on earth the Hour that cannot be thwarted,

Neither advanced, at the price of a world or a soul, and its Prophet
Comes through the blood of the vanguards who dreamed — too soon — it
had sounded.

The Eye of Allah in Debits and Credits 1926 (London: Methuen)

Aleksander Isaakovich Kitaigorodskii 1914-

1 A first-rate theory predicts ; a second-rate theory forbids ; and a third-rate
theory explains after the event.

Lecture, IUC Amsterdam. August 1975

Spencer Klaw 1920-

2 It is only at long intervals that the researcher enjoys the feeling (or illusion)
of solid accomplishment that the administrator can enjoy merely by empty-
ing his in-box.

Science 1969 163 60

Arthur Koestler 1905—

3 Nobody before the Pythagoreans had thought that mathematical relations
held the secret of the universe. Twenty-five centuries later, Europe is still
blessed and cursed with their heritage. To non-European civilizations, the
idea that numbers are the key to both wisdom and power, seems never to
have occurred.

The Sleepwalkers 1959 (London: Hutchinson)

4 To believe entails no desire to know; everybody reads the Bible but who
reads Flavius Josephus?

The Yogi and the Commissar 1945 (London: Cape)

Roy M Kohn

5 Both horns of a dilemma are usually attached to the same bull: A built-in
impediment to understanding psychoses.

[Title of paper]

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1 970. Summer, p633

William Lester Kolb 1916—

6 Science A : In modern social science usage, the term Science denotes the
systematic, objective study of empirical phenomena and the resultant bodies
of knowledge. It is believed by social scientists that their disciplines are
themselves sciences in this sense, and that science as a human activity is
itself an object of social science investigation.

A Dictionary of the Social Sciences ed Julius Gould and William L Kolb. 1964 (Paris: UNESCO/
Tavistock)

Jan Amos Komensky [Comenius] 1592-1670

1 We bid you, then, who are priests in the realm of nature, to press on your

89 Karl Kraus

labours with all vigour. See to it that mankind is not for ever mocked by a
Philosophy empty, superficial, false, uselessly subtle. Your heritage is a fair
Sparta ; enrich her with fair equipment, and by making a strict examination
both of facts and of opinions concerning them, set an example, as you
properly may, to politicians and theologians. He was right who said that a
contentious philosophy is the parent of a contentious theology: we must
therefore say at once and plainly about Politics that the main political
theories on which the present rulers of the world support themselves are
treacherous quagmires and the real causes of the generally tottering and
indeed collapsing condition of the world. It is for you to show that errors
are no more to be tolerated, even though they have the authority of long
tradition and are drawn from Adam himself; you must show, not only to
theologians, but to the politicians themselves, that everything must be
called back to Urim and Thummim, I mean to Light and Truth.

The Way of Light Amsterdam, 1 668

The Koran

1 We made from water every living thing.

Sura 21 : 31

2 We have sent down iron, with its mighty strength and diverse uses for
mankind, so that Allah may know those who aid Him, though unseen, and
help His apostles. Powerful is Allah, and mighty.

Sura Iron 57: 25

Korean Proverb

3 Kwon un sip nyon i yo, sye nun paik nyon i ra.

Power lasts ten years; influence not more than a hundred.

Damodar Dharmonand Kosambi 1907-1966

4 ... the work remains unique in all Indian literature because of its complete

freedom from cant and absence of specious reasoning.

[On the Arthashastra of Kautilya]

The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India 1965 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

Tadeusz Kotarbinski 1 886—

5 Inteligent jest to pasozyt wytwarzary kulture.

An intellectual is a parasite that exudes culture.

in Yugoslav Dictionary of Quotations

6 Tam jest potrebny kontroler, gdzie jest potrezebny kontroler kontrolera.
Where there is the need for a controller, a controller of the controller is
also needed.

in Yugoslav Dictionary of Quotations

Karl Kraus 1868-1952

7 Science is spectrum analysis. Art is photosynthesis.

90 Leopold Kronecker

Leopold Kronecker 1823-1891

1 Die ganze Zahl schuf der liebe Gott, alles Ubrige ist Menschenwerk.

God made the integers, man made the rest.

Jahresberichte der deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung book 2, pi 9. In F Cajori A History of
Mathematics 1919 (London: Macmillan)

[Prince] Peter Alekseyevich Kropotkin 1842-1921

2 There are not many joys in human life equal to the joy of sudden birth of
a generalization .... He who has once in his life experienced this joy of
scientific creation will never forget it.

Kuan Yin Tze 8th Century

3 Those who are good at archery learnt from the bow and not from Yi the
Archer. Those who know how to manage boats learnt from boats and not
from Wo [the legendary mighty boatman]. Those who can think learnt for
themselves and not from the Sages.

in J Needham Science and Civilization in China 1956 (London: Cambridge UP)

Otto Vilhelmovich Kuusinen 1881-1964

4 The Marxist-Leninist world outlook stems from science itself and trusts
science, as long as science is not divorced from reality and practice.

Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism Moscow, 1963

Jean de La Broyere 1645-1696

5 Les medecins laissent mourir, les charlatans tuent.

The doctors allow one to die, the charlatans kill.

Les Characteres

Diogenes Laertius 3rd Century bc

6 [When someone asked him his nationality, he replied] cosmopolitan.

Diogenes Laertius VI, 63

Alphonse Marie Louis Prat de Lamartine 1790-1869

7 It is not I who think, but my ideas which think for me.

Charles Lamb 1775-1834

8 Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles
me less, as I never think about them.

Letter to Thomas Manning, 2 January 1 806

Frederick William Lanchester 1868-1946

9 The fighting strength of a force may be broadly defined as proportional to
the square of its numerical strength multiplied by the fighting value of its
individual units.

[An engineer of genius and a pioneer in the quantization of social phenomena]

Aircraft in Warfare 1916 (London: Constable)

91 Lao Tze

Andrew Lang 1844-1912

1 He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts — for support rather
than illumination.

Ray Lankester 1847-1929

2 The fact that we are able to classify organisms at all in accordance with the
structural characteristics which they present, is due to the fact of their
being related by descent.

in D'Arcy Thompson Growth and Form 1917 (London: Cambridge UP)

Lao Tze 604-531 bc

3 Clay is moulded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the
space where there is nothing .... Thus, taking advantage of what is, we
recognise the utility of what is not.

Tao Te Ching ch 41

4 Nature is not human-hearted (anthropomorphic).

Tao Te Ching ch 5

5 Of the second-rate rulers, people speak respectfully, saying, ‘He has done

92 Lao Tze

this, he has done that’. Of the first-rate rulers they do not say this. They
say: ‘We have done it all ourselves’.

[There are dozens of translations of Lao Tze. Some, such as this one. stretch the meaning very
far, as the text can mean all things to all men. However, the cumulative effect of the text cannot
be mistaken and thus perusal of the whole is recommended. There is indeed some evidence that
the dialectical method of Hegel was influenced by Chinese traditions. We do not know who
supplied this translation, but the sentiment accurately characterises directors of research projects]
Tao Te Ching ch 1 7

1 A good calculator does not need artificial aids.

Tao Te Ching ch 27

Pierre Simon de Laplace 1749-1827

2 Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces
by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings
which compose it, if moreover, this intelligence were vast enough to submit
these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the
movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest
atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would
be present to its eyes.

Oeuvres vol VII. Theorii Analytique de Probability 1 81 2-1 820. Introduction

3 Napoleon: ‘You have written this huge book on the system of the world
without once mentioning the author of the universe’.

Laplace: ‘Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis’.

Later, when told by Napoleon about the incident, Lagrange commented :
‘Ah, but that is a fine hypothesis. It explains so many things’.

Ferdinand Lasalle 1825-1864

4 Whoever obstructs scientific inquiry clamps down the safety valve of public
opinion and puts the state in train for an explosion.

Science and the Workingmen 1 863

Emanuel Lasker 1868-1941

5 On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative
combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, cul-
minating in a checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.

[We find that computer programming imposes the same discipline]

Latin Proverb

6 Ubi bene ibi patria.

He makes his home where the living is best.

Johann Caspar Lavater 1741-1801

7 Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigour ;
who can produce more and better, has talents', who can produce what
none else can, has genius.

Aphorisms on man London, 1 788, no. 23

93 Philip Lenard

David Herbert Lawrence 1885-1930

1 You can’t invent a design. You recognise it, in the fourth dimension. That
is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.

Phoenix: Art and Morality

Gustave Le Bon 1841-1931

2 At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves
against the East ; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet
created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an
obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo
or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The inven-
tors of genius hasten the march of civilisation. The fanatics and the hallu-
cinated create history.

Henri Le Chatelier 1850-1936

3 Every system in chemical equilibrium, under the influence of a change of
any single one of the factors of equilibrium, undergoes a transformation
in such direction that, if this transformation took place alone, it would
produce a change in the opposite direction of the factor in question. The
factors of equilibrium are temperature, pressure and electromotive force,
corresponding to the three forms of energy — heat, electricity and mechanical
energy.

Recherches sur les Equilibres Chimiques 1 888. Comptes Rendus 1 884 99 786

Thomas Andrew Lehrer 1928—

4 In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics : plagiarize . . .
only be sure always to call it please research.

[Song from a very successful gramophone record, ca 1 960]

Lobachevski

5 And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations?
And what is it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your
money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American
know-how, that’s what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr
Wemher von Braun.

[Gramophone record]

Wernher von Braun on That Was The Year That Was (TW3 songs and other songs of the year)
1965

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz 1646-1716

6 The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like
the art of decyphering, in which an ingenious conjecture greatly shortens
the road.

New Essays Concerning Human Understanding IV, XII

Philip Lenard 1862-1947

7 No entry to Jews and Members of the German Physical Society.

[Notice on his door]

in K Mendelssohn The World of Walther Nernot. The Rise and Fall of German Science 1 973
(London: Macmillan)

94 Vladimir llich Lenin

Vladimir llich Lenin 1870-1924

1 Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

[Slogan promoting the plan of GOELRO — the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia]
1920

2 Given these economic premises it is quite possible, after the overthrow of
the capitalists and bureaucrats, to proceed immediately overnight to super-
sede them in the control of production and distribution, in the work of
keeping account of labour and products by the armed workers, by the
whole of the armed population. (The question of control and accounting
must not be confused with the question of the scientifically trained staff of
engineers, agronomists and so on. These gentlemen are working today and
obey the capitalists; they will work even better tomorrow and obey the
armed workers.)

State and Revolution 1 91 7, ch 5

3 It is absurd to deny the role of fantasy in even the strictest science.

Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii 5th edn, vol 29

4 Socialism is inconceivable without . . . engineering based on the latest
discoveries of modem science.

Left-wing Childishness and the Petty-bourgeois Mentality Moscow. 1 968

5 We do not invent, we take ready-made from capitalism; the best factories,
experimental stations and academies. We need adopt only the best models
furnished by the experience of the most advanced countries.

The Impending Catastrophe 1917

Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519

6 The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the
genitals and the tongue.

In Edward MacCurdy The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci vol 1 1938 (London: Cape) ch 3

7 II sole no si move.

The Sun does not move.

Works ed J P and I A Richter (London: Phaidon Press)

8 Nessuna humana investigazione si pio dimandara vera scienzia s'essa non
passa per le matematiche dimonstrazione.

No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be
demonstrated mathematically.

9 Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

in Edward MacCurdy The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci vol 1, 1938 (London: Cape) ch 1

10 There is no higher or lower knowledge, but one only, flowing out of
experimentation.

R L Lesher and G J Howick

1 1 Eight hundred life spans can bridge more than 50,000 years. But of these

95 William Leybourn

800 people, 650 spent their lives in caves or worse; only the last 70 had any
truly effective means of communicating with one another, only the last 6
ever saw a printed word or had any real means of measuring heat or cold,
only the last 4 could measure time with any precision; only the last 2 used
an electric motor; and the vast majority of the items that make up our
material world were developed within the lifespan of the eight-hundredth
person.

Assessing Technology Transfer 1966 NASA Report SP-5067, pp9-10

Claude Levi-Strauss 1908-

1 La langue est une raison humaine qui a ses raisons, et que I’homme ne
connait pas.

Language is human reason, which has its internal logic of which man
knows nothing.

La PensGe Sauvage 1962 (Paris: Librairie Plon)

2 No science today can consider the structures with which it has to deal as
being more than a haphazard arrangement. That arrangement alone is
structured which meets two conditions : that it be a system, ruled by an
internal cohesiveness; that this cohesiveness, inaccessible to observation in
an isolated system, be revealed in the study of transformations, through
which the similar properties in apparently different systems are brought to
light.

Lepon inaugurate in The Scope of Anthropology transl S O and R A Paul. 1 967 (London: Cape)

Cecil Day Lewis 1 904-

3 And the mind must sweat a poison
. . . that, discharged not thence
Gangrenes the vital sense
And makes disorder true.

It is certain we shall attain
No life till we stamp on all
Life the tetragonal
Pure symmetry of the brain.

Transitional Poem in Collected Poems 1929-1933 1945 (London: Hogarth Press)

Percy Wyndham Lewis 1884-1957
4 Wherever there is objective truth, there is satire.

Rude Assignment 1950 (London: Hutchinson)

Sinclair Lewis 1885-1951

5 Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very
dead.

Address to the Swedish Academy 1 930

William Leybourn 1626-1700

6 But leaving those of the Body, I shall proceed to such Recreations as
adorn the Mind; of which those of the Mathematicks are inferior to none.

Pleasure with Profit London. 1 694

96 Sam Lilley

(

Sam Lilley

1 The form of society has a very great effect on the rate of inventions and a
form of society which in its young days encourages technical progress can,
as a result of the very inventions it engenders, eventually come to retard
further progress until a new social structure replaces it. The converse is also
true. Technical progress affects the structure of society.

Men, Machines and History 1948 (London: Lawrence & Wishart)

Charles Augustus Lindberg 1902-1974

2 The tragedy of scientific man is that he has found no way to guide his own
discoveries to a constructive end. He has devised no weapon so terrible that
he has not used it. He has guarded none so carefully that his enemies have
not eventually obtained it and turned it against him. His security today and
tomorrow seems to depend on building weapons which will destroy him
tomorrow.

Frederick Alexander Lindemann [Lord Cherwell] 1886-1957

3 [To Lord De L’lsle (1957)] You know the definition of the perfectly
designed machine .... The perfectly designed machine is one in which all
its working parts wear out simultaneously. I am that machine.

in Lord Birkenhead The Prof in Two Worlds 1961 (London: Collins)

Eric Linklater [Robert Russell] 1899-1974

4 For the scientific acquisition of knowledge is almost as tedious as the
routine acquisition of wealth.

White Man's Saga 1929 (London: Cape)

Carl Linnaeus 1707-1778

5 Natura non facit saltus.

Nature does not make jumps.

Philosophia Botanica 1751. no. 77

Gabriel Lippmann 1845-1921

6 [On the Gaussian curve, remarked to Poincare] Les experimentateurs
s'imaginent que c’est un theoreme de mathematique, et les mathematiciens
d'etre un fait experimental.

Experimentalists think that it is a mathematical theorem while the mathe-
maticians believe it to be an experimental fact.

in D'Arcy Thompson On Growth and Form 1917 (London: Cambridge UP) I

Konrad Lorenz 1 903—

7 Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the
evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.

On Aggression 1966 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World)

8 In nature we find not only that which is expedient, but also everything
which is not so inexpedient as to endanger the existence of the species.

On Aggression 1966 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World)

97 Graham Lusk

Ada Augusta [Countess of] Lovelace 1815-1853

1 The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has
rendered it possible to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as
bid fair to make this engine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is
the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regula-
ting, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the
fabrication of brocaded stuffs. It is in this that the distinction between

the two engines lies. Nothing of the sort exists in the Difference Engine.

We may say most aptly, that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical
patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves .... In
enabling mechanisms to combine together general symbols in successions of
unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the
operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract
branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is
developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that
these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the
purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have
rendered possible . . .

General Menabrea's Sketch of the Analytical Engine, invented by Charles Babbage. With
extensive notes by the translator October 1 842

Amy Lowell 1874-1925

2 Christ! What are patterns for?

Patterns in The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell (Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin)

Lucian ca 1 1 5-ca 1 80

3 Deus ex machina.

A God from the machine.

[An allusion to the stage machinery of the theatre, or which see Mary Renault The Mask of
Apollo]

Lucretius 99-55 bc

4 I believe that this world is newly made: its origin is a recent event, not one
of remote antiquity. That is why even now some arts are still being per-
fected: the process of development is still going on. Many improvements
have just been introduced in ships. It is no time since organists gave birth
to their tuneful harmonies. Yes, and it is not long since the truth about
nature was first discovered, and I myself am even now the first who has
been found to render this revelation into my native speech.

De Rerum Natura

Georg Lukacs 1885-1971
5 Nature is a social category.

History and Class Consciousness transl R Livingstone. 1 923 (London: The Merlin Press)

Graham Lusk

6 The work of a man’s life is equal to the sum of all the influences he has
brought to bear upon the world in which he lives.

Science 1 927 65 555

98 Martin Luther

Martin Luther 1483-1546

1 Die Arznei macht kranke, die Mat he mat ik traurige und die Theologie
siindhafte Leute.

Medicine makes people ill, mathematics makes them sad and theology
makes them sinful.

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko 1898—

2 The Party, the Government and J V Stalin personally, have taken an
unflagging interest in the further development of the Michurin teaching.

[This was the session at which Mendelian genetics were condemned and outlawed for nearly a
generation]

Report to the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences Moscow, 31 July-7 August 1948

Thomas Babbington [Baron] Macaulay 1800-1859

3 The art which Bacon taught was the art of inventing arts.

Lord Bacon in Edinburgh Review July 1 837

4 But even Archimedes was not free from the prevailing notion that geometry
was degraded by being employed to produce anything useful. It was with
difficulty that he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. He
was half ashamed of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile
nations, and always spoke of them slightingly as mere amusements, as
trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after
intense application to the higher parts of his science.

Lord Bacon In Edinburgh Review July 1 837

Warren S McCulloch 1898-

5 Don’t bite my finger — look where it’s pointing.

[The pioneer of modelling the neurones and their operation]
in Stafford Beer Platform for Change 1975 (Chichester: Wiley)

Ernst Mach 1838-1916

6 The aim of research is the discovery of the equations which subsist between
the elements of phenomena.

Popular Scientific Lectures Chicago, 1 91 0

7 Every statement in physics has to state relations between observable
quantities.

[Mach's Principle]

Antonio Machado 1875-1939

8 Caminante, no hay camino
Se hace camino al andar.

Traveller, there is no path,

Paths are made by walking.

[Theme of popular song in Latin America]

Alan Lindsay Mackay 1926—

9 How can we have any new ideas or fresh outlooks when 90 per cent of all

99

Herbert Marshall McLuhan

the scientists who have ever lived have still not died?

Scientific World 1 969 13 1 7-21

1 Like the ski resort full of girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.

Lecture, Birkbeck College, University of London, 1964

Charles Mackay 1814-1889

2 Blessings on Science, and her handmaid Steam
They make Utopia only half a dream.

Railways 1 846

3 Cannon-balls may aid the truth,

But thought's a weapon stronger;

We’ll win out battles by its aid; —

Wait a little longer.

The Good Time Coming

4 Truth . . . and if mine eyes

Can bear its blaze, and trace its symmetries,

Measure its distance, and its advent wait,

I am no prophet — I but calculate.

The Poetical Works of Charles Mackay 1876 (London: Frederick Warne)

[Sir] Halford John Mackinder 1861-1947

5 Knowledge is one. Its division into subjects is a concession to human
weakness.

Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society 1 887 9 141 -60

Colin Maclaurin 1698-1746

6 [Writing to James Stirling in 1740] ... an unlucky accident has happened
to the French mathematicians at Peru. It seems that they were shewing
some French gallantry to the native's wives, who have murdered their
servants, destroyed their Instruments and burn't their papers, the Gentlemen
escaping narrowly themselves. What an ugly article this will make in a
journal.

in Charles Tweedie James Stirling 1922 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

John McLeod and John Osborn

7 ... in real life mistakes are likely to be irrevocable. Computer simulation,
however, makes it economically practical to make mistakes on purpose. If
you are astute, therefore, you can learn much more than they cost. Further-
more, if you are at all discreet, no one but you need ever know you made

a mistake.

Natural Automata and Useful Simulations ed H H Pattee et a! 1966 (London: Macmillan)

Herbert Marshall McLuhan 191 1—

8 When this circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?

The Medium is the Massage (New York: Basic Books)

100 Magna Chart a

Magna Charta 1215

1 There shall be standard measures of wine, beer, and corn — the London
quarter — throughout the whole of our kingdom, and a standard width of
dyed, russet and halberject cloth — two ells within the selvedges; and there
shall be standard weights also.

Michael Maier 17th Century

2 Fac ex mare et foemina circulum, inde quadrangulum, hinc triangulum, fac
circulum et habebis lapidem philosopltorum.

From a man and a woman make a circle, then a square, then a triangle,
finally a circle and you will obtain the Philosophers’ Stone.

Scrutinium chymicum Frankfurt 1867

Andre Malraux 1901-1970

3 Les intellec fuels sont comme les femmes; ils s'en prennent aux militaires.
Intellectuals are like women; they go for the military,
in N Moss Men who play God (London: Gollancz)

Thomas Robert Malthus 1766-1834

4 Above all, the Mechanics Institutions, open the fairest prospect that, within
a moderate period of time, the fundamentals of political economy will, to

a very useful extent, be known to the higher, middle, and a most important
portion of the working classes of society in England.

An Essay on the Principles of Population 1798

5 Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometric ratio. Subsistence
only increases in an arithmetic ratio.

An Essay on the Principles of Population 1 798

6 The passion between the sexes ... in every age ... is so nearly the same
that it may be considered in algebraic language as a given quantity.

An Essay on the Principles of Population 1798

Thomas Mann 1875-1955

7 A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.

Essay on Freud 1 937

8 I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathe-
matics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.

The Magic Mountain 1927 (London: Seeker)

9 Yet each in itselt— this was the uncanny, the antiorganic, the life-denying
character of them all — each of them was absolutely symmetrical, icily
regular in form. They were too regular, as substance adapted to life never
was to this degree — the living principle shuddered at this perfect precision,
found it deathly, the very marrow of death — Hans Castorp felt he under-
stood now the reason why the builders of antiquity purposely and secretly

101

Mao Tse-tung

introduced minute variations from absolute symmetry in their columnar
structures.

The Magic Mountain 1927 (London: Seeker)

Karl Mannheim 1893-1947

1 Even the categories in which experiences are subsumed, collected, and
ordered vary according to the social position of the observer.

Ideology and Utopia 1936 (London: Routledge)

Mao Tse-tung 1893-

2 .... It is man’s social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct
ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these
ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the
world.

Probably On Practice

3 ... hydrogen and oxygen aren't just transformed immediately in any old
way into watei. Water has its history too.

Mao Tse-tung unrehearsed ed S Schram, 1974 (London: Penguin)

4 The atomic bomb is a paper tiger .... Terrible to look at but not so strong
as it seems.

in Anna Louise Strong A World's Eye View from a Yenan Cave (An Interview with Mao Tse-tung J

5 Dialectics was interpreted in the past as consisting of three big laws, and
Stalin said that it consisted of four big laws. I think there is only one basic
law, and that it is the law of contradiction. Quality and quantity, affirm-
ation and negation, phenomenon and essence, content and form, necessity
and freedom, possibility and reality etc, are all unity of opposites.

in Thomas G Hart The Dynamics of Revolution 1971, University of Stockholm

6 Knowledge is a matter of science, and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever
is permissible. What is required is definitely the reverse — honesty and
modesty.

On Practice

7 Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought
content is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences
and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles

in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend
freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if
administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or
school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the
arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and
scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not
be settled in summary fashion.

On the correct handling of contradictions among the people

8 Marxist philosophy holds that the most important problem does not lie in

102 Mao Tse-tung

understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to
explain it, but in applying the knowledge of these laws actively to change
the world.

On Practice

1 Natural science is one of man’s weapons in his fight for freedom. For the
purpose of attaining freedom in society, man must use social science to
understand and change society and carry out social revolution. For the
purpose of attaining freedom in the world of nature, man must use natural
science to understand, conquer and change nature and thus attain freedom
from nature.

Speech at the inaugural meeting of the Natural Science Research Society for the Border Regions

2 Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are
they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it
alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for pro-
duction, the class struggle and scientific experiment.

Where Do Correct Ideas Come From ?

Ramon Margalef 1919-

3 Probably the hypothesis holds everywhere that the less mature ecosystem
feeds the more mature structures around it.

Perspectives in Ecological Theory 1968 (Chicago, III: University of Chicago Press)

Christopher Marlowe 1564-1593

4 I count religion but a childish toy,

And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

Machiavel in The Jew of Malta Prologue

5 Nowe therein of all Sciences (I speak still of humane and according to the
humane conceits) is our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show
the way but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man
to enter into it.

Apologie for Poetrie

Don Marquis 1878-1937

6 An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.

The Sun Dial

Groucho Julius Marx 1895—

7 What has posterity ever done for me?

Attributed

Karl Marx 1818-1883

8 History itself is an actual part of natural history, of nature’s development
into man. Natural science will in time include the science of man as the
science of man will include natural science: there will be one science.

Writings of the young Marx on Philosophy and Society ed L D Easton and K H Guddat, 1967
(New York: Doubleday)

103 John Masefield

1 Darwin’s book is very important
and serves me as a basis in natural
science for the class struggle in
history. One has to put up with the
crude English method of develop-
ment, of course. Despite all
deficiencies not only is the death-
blow dealt here for the first time to
‘teleology’ in the natural sciences,
but their rational meaning is
empirically explained.

Letter to Lasalle in Marx-Angels Selected
Correspondence, 1846-95 transl Dona Torr.

1943 (London: Lawrence & Wishart)

2 The man who draws up a pro-
gramme for the future is a reactionary.

Letter to Beesley, UK

3 Mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve; since, looking
at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself
arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already
exist or are at least in the process of formation.

[God never sends mouths but sends meat (English Proverb, 1 546), but we have few reasons for
such confidence in this statement today]

4 Only the working class can . . . convert science from an instrument of class
rule into a popular force .... Only in the Republic of Labour can science
play its proper role.

On the Paris Commune K Marx and F Engels (London: Lawrence & Wishart)

5 Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert , es kommt
darauf an, sie zu verandern. (Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach.)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways ; the
point, however, is to change it.

[Epitaph on his tomb in Highgate Cemetery, London]

6 The product of mental labour — science — always stands far below its value,
because the labour-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to
the labour-time required for its original production.

Theories of Surplus Value

7 We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be
contemplated from two sides, it can be divided into the history of nature
and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided
off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are
mutually conditioned.

The German Ideology

John Masefield 1878-1967

8 ... Harwell Man’s perpetual treasure-trove . . .

in The Collected Poems of John Masefield 1923 (London: Heinemann)

104 Matsushita Electrical Company

Matsushita Electrical Company

1 For the building of a new Japan
Let’s put mind and strength together.

Doing our best to promote production,

Sending our goods to the peoples of the world.

Endlessly and continuously,

Like water gushing from a fountain.

Grow industry, grow, grow, grow.

Harmony and sincerity. Matsushita Electrical.

[Company hymn. Sung like a school song, on official occasions, to promote esprit de corps ]
in F L K Hsu lemoto. The Heart of Japan 1975 (New York: Wiley)

William Somerset Maugham 1874-1965

2 It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the
future.

in Richard Hughes Foreign Devil 1972 (London: Deutsch)

James Clerk Maxwell 1813-1879

3 ... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been approxi-
mately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of
science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.

[Maxwell himself categorically rejected this view and was attacking it]

October 1871. Scientific Papers 2 244

4 In the very beginning of science,

the parsons, who managed things then.

Being handy with hammer and chisel,
made gods in the likeness of men ;

Till Commerce arose and at length
some men of exceptional power
Supplanted both demons and gods by
the atoms, which last to this hour.

[Plus further verses]

Notes of the President's Address. 1874

5 The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the
only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

in J G Crowther British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century (London: Seeker & Warburg)

[Sir] Peter Brian Medawar 1915-

6 Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won't do. It is an end product,
moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be
erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and
strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth century thought.

The Hope of Progress 1972 (London: Methuen)

7 No scientist is admired for failing in the attempt to solve problems that lie
beyond his competence. The most he can hope for is the kindly contempt

105 [ Prince ] Clemens Wenzel Lothar Metternich- Winneburg

earned by the Utopian politician. If politics is the art of the possible,
research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-
minded affairs. Good scientists study the most important problems they
think they can solve. It is, after all, their professional business to solve
problems, not merely to grapple with them.

The Art of the Soluble 1967 (London: Methuen)

[On Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man\ The greater part of it, I
shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of tedious metaphysical
conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds
that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.

The Art of the Soluble 1967 (London: Methuen)

Charles Edward Kenneth Mees 1882-1960

2 The best person to decide what research shall be done is the man who is
doing the research. The next best is the head of the department. After that
you leave the field of best persons and meet increasingly worse groups. The
first of these is the research director, who is probably wrong more than half
the time. Then comes a committee which is wrong most of the time. Finally
there is a committee of company vice-presidents, which is wrong all the
time.

[Uttered in 1935. Mees was Research Director of Kodak Ltd]

Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1 961 7 1 82

Herman Melville 1819-1891

3 Captain Ahab: ‘My means are sane, my motive and my object mad’.

Moby Dick 1 851

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev 1834-1907

4 I am not afraid of the admission of foreign, even of socialistic ideas into

Russia, because I have faith in the Russian people who have already got rid
of the Tatar domination and the feudal system.

Robert K Merton 1910—

5 Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science
makes skepticism a virtue.

Social Theory and Social Structure 1 962 (New York: Free Press)

[Prince] Clemens Wenzel Lothar Metternich-Winneburg 1773-1859
6 [To the Austrian Ambassador in London for transmission to King George
IV, 1825] There is one matter which I beg you to bring to the King’s notice
yet again before your departure; this is the proposed foundation of a
university of London. You have my authority to tell His Majesty of my
absolute conviction that the implementation of this plan would bring about
England’s ruin.

G de Bertier De Sauvingny Metternich and his times in University of London Bulletin no. 2,
January 1 972

106

Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin

Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin 1855-1935

1 We must not wait for favours from Nature; our task is to wrest them from
her.

[Slogan of the Lysenkoist school]

Short Dictionary of Philosophy Moscow 1 955

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 1886-1969

2 Less is more.

[The architect affirms the positive virtue of shaving with Occam's Razor (q.v.)]

Obituary in The Times 19 August 1969

3 The long path from material through function to creative work has only
one goal : to create order out of the desperate confusion of our time.

John Stuart Mill 1806-1873

4 The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.

Autobiography v

Henry Miller 1 891—

5 The wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of
reality is falling to tatters.

The Tropic of Cancer 1934 (London: Calder)

John Milton 1608-1674

6 The Argument: Adam inquires concerning celestial motions; is doubtfully
answered, and exhorted to search rather things more worthy of knowledge.

[Kepler died in 1 630]

Heading in Paradise Lost 1667 Book VIII

7 Behold now this vast City: a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty,
encompassed and surrounded with His protection ; the shop of war hath
not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out plates and
instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered Truth, than there
be pens and hands there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching,
revolving new notions . . .

[Describing London during the Civil War]

Areopagitica

8 Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular

Then most, when most irregular they seem;

And in their motions harmony divine.

Paradise Lost 1 667, Book V, 623

9 From Man or Angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge,

His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire. Or, if they list to try
Conjecture, he his fabric of the Heavens

107 [S/r] Thomas More

Hath left to their disputes — perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model Heaven
And calculate the stars: how they will wield
The mighty frame: how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances; how gird the Sphere
With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o’er.

Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.

Paradise Lost 1667. Book VIII. 72

1 [Mulciber, the architect of the great palace of Pandemonium, had been
thrown out of Heaven]

. . . nor aught availed him now

To have built in Heaven high towers; nor did he ’scape
By all his engines, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in Hell.

[The theory of the takeover which ousted Satan and his colleagues is entertainingly discussed
by Anthony Jay in Management and Machiavelli 1970 (London Penguin)]

Paradise Lost 1667. Book I 748

2 [The Tree of Knowledge] O Sacred, Wise and Wisdom-giving Plant,
Mother of Science.

Paradise Lost 1 667 Book IX, 679

Alwyn Mittasch 1869-1953

3 Chemistry without catalysis, would be a sword without a handle, a light
without brilliance, a bell without sound.

Journal of Chemical Education 1 948 531 -2

[Sir] Walter Hamilton Moberly 1881-

4 For God’s sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think.

The Crisis in the University 1949 (London: Student Christian Movement Press)

J Moleschott 1822-1893

5 [Life is] woven out of air by light.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1972, Winter. p208

Michel Eyquem Montaigne 1533-1592

6 If, by being overstudious, we impair our health and spoil our good humour
... let us give it over.

Ess a is

7 Science without conscience is but death of the soul.

Ess a is

[Sir] Thomas More 1478-1535

8 Herodicus, being a trainer, and himself of a sickly constitution, by a com-
bination of training and doctoring found out a way of torturing first and

108 [5/>] Thomas More

chiefly himself, and secondly the rest of the world. By the invention of
lingering death; for he had a mortal disease; which he perpetually tended,
and, as recovery was out of the question, he passed his entire life as a
valetudinarian; he could do nothing but attend upon himself, and he was
in constant torment whenever he departed in anything from his usual
regimen, and so dying hard, by the help of science he struggled on to old
age.

Utopia transl P K Marshall. 1965 (New York: Washington Square Press)

Augustus De Morgan 1808-1871

1 Lagrange, in one of the later years of his life, imagined that he had over-
come the difficulty (of the parallel axiom). He went so far as to write a
paper, which he took with him to the Institute, and began to read it. But
in the first paragraph something struck him which he had not observed:
he muttered: ‘7/ faut que j’y songe encore’, and put the paper in his pocket.
[I must think about it again]

Budget of Paradoxes London, 1872

Christopher Morley 1890-

2 An engineer gave me an ashtray
Made of a chunk of smelted bismuth.

The ore, when cooked,

Crystallises in sharp stairs and comers,

Like the ruins of a mimic Cuzco.

O basic and everlasting geometry.

The cordillera itself

In the slack and purge of the fire

Boils into right angles,

Takes conventional Inca pattern.

The greatest disorder on earth
Has the instinct of Perfect Form.

[Lord] John Morley [of Blackburn] 1838-1923

3 The next great task of science is to create a religion for mankind.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse 1791-1872

4 What hath God wrought.

[First message sent by him over the electric telegraph. 24 May 1844]

Herbert Joseph Muller 1905-

5 Another way of describing the revolution in physics is to say that the key
nouns have been changed into verbs — to move, to act, to happen. What
moves and acts, physicists do not care; ‘matter’ to them means ‘to matter’,
to make a difference. But our language is still geared to express ‘states of
being’, rather than processes. In this connection, also, the German language
helps to explain German philosophy. The Germans have been especially
prone to hypostatize their abstractions, identify the Rational and the Real,
invent concepts comparable to Frankfurtemess and Sauerkrautitude — for

109 Henry Needier

they capitalize all their nouns. And this may help to explain their present
worship of the State.

Science and Criticism 1943 (New Haven, Conn: Yale UP)

1 The great revolutionary thinkers are those who most violently wrenched
traditional associations : Karl Marx was a philosophical Oscar Wilde, more
scandalous because more sober.

Science and Criticism 1943 (New Haven. Conn: Yale UP)

Hermann Joseph Muller 1890-1967

2 Death is an advantage to life .... Its advantage lies chiefly in giving ampler
opportunities for the genes of the new generation to have their merits tested
out ... by clearing the way for fresh starts . . .

Science 1955 121 1

Fridtjof Nansen 1861-1930

3 Man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, he is no longer man.
[On the reason for polar explorations]

Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821

4 The advance and perfecting of mathematics are closely joined to the pros-
perity of the nation.

5 They may say what they like; everything is organized matter.

Gamel Abdel Nasser 1918-1970

6 The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves,
only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility
that there may be something to them [which] we are missing.

[A text book of the game-theory view of politics as practiced by the CIA]
in Miles Copeland The Game of Nations 1969 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Joseph Needham 1900-

7 But Chinese civilization has the overpowering beauty of the wholly other,
and only the wholly other can inspire the deepest love and the profoundest
desire to learn.

The Grand Titration 1969 (London: Allen & Unwin)

8 Democracy might therefore almost in a sense be termed that practice of
which science is the theory.

The Grand Titration 1969 (London: Allen & Unwin)

9 Laboratorium est oratorium.

The place where we do our scientific work is a place of prayer.

Henry Needier 1685-1760

10 Who formed the curious texture of the eye,

110 Henry Needier

And cloath’d it with the various tunicles,

And texture exquisite ; with chrystal juice
Supply’d it, to transmit the rays of light?

A Poem to Prove the Certainty of a God in Miscellaneous Correspondence ed Benjamin Martin,
London, 1759

Jawaharlal Nehru 1889-1964

1 I fear that the spinning wheel is not stronger than the machine.

[Gandhi and his followers promoted village industry rather than industrialization and their
spinning wheel appears on the flag of India]

2 It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, in-
sanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradi-
tion, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by
starving people .... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At
every turn we have to seek its aid .... The future belongs to science and
to those who make friends with science.

Proceedings of the National Institute of Sciences of India 1961 27A 564

[Cardinal] John Henry Newman 1801-1890

3 Living movements do not come out of committees.

[Sir] Isaac Newton 1642-1727

4 Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not
bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter
into their composition? The changing of bodies into light, and light into
bodies, is very comformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted
with transmutations.

Opticks 1 704. Query 30

5 I feign no hypotheses (hypotheses non fingo), for whatever is not deduced
from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether
metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical have no

1 1 1 Norman Nicholson

place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions
are inferred from the phenomena and afterwards rendered general by induc-
tion.

Scholium to Philosophise Natura/is Principia Mathematica

1 I intend, to be no further solicitous about matters of Philosophy; and there-
fore 1 hope you will not take it ill, if you find me never doing anything
more in that kind.

[Letter to Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society]

Opticks 1704

2 I know not what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have
been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now
and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

in D Brewster Memoirs of Newton 1855, vol 2, ch 27

3 Physics, beware of metaphysics.

4 Whence is it that nature does nothing in vain ; and whence arises all that
order and beauty which we see in the world?

Opticks 1704

Norman Nicholson 1914 —

5 The toadstool towers infest the shore:

Stink-horns that propagate and spore
Wherever the wind blows.

Scafell looks down from the bracken band,

And sees hell in a grain of sand,

And feels the canker itch between his toes.

This is a land where dirt is clean,

And poison pasture, quick and green,

And storm sky, bright and bare ;

Where sewers flow with milk, and meat
Is carved up for the fire to eat,

And children suffocate in God’s fresh air.

[On the leak of radioactive iodine from Windscale]

Windsca/e in A Local Habitation 1972 (London: Faber 81 Faber)

6 The furthest stars recede

Faster than the earth itself to our need.

For far beyond the furthest, where
Light is snatched backward, no
Star leaves echo or shadow
To prove it has ever been there.

And if the universe
Reversed and showed
The colour of its money ;

If now unobservable light
Flowed inward, and the skies snowed
A blizzard of galaxies,

1 1 2 Norman Nicholson

The lens of night would burn
Brighter than the focussed sun.

And man turn blinded

With white-hot darkness in his eyes.

The Expanding Universe in The Pot Geranium 1954 (London: Faber & Faber)

Marjorie Hope Nicolson 1 894 —

1 The language of poetry and science was no longer one when the world was
no longer one.

in Encyclopaedia of Poetry & Poetics 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP)

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900

2 . . . — it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific.
Moral: science is the forbidden as such — it alone is forbidden. Science is
the first sin, seed of all sin, the original sin. This alone is morality. ‘Thou
shalt not know’ — the rest follows.

Antichrist ch 8

3 Glaubt ihr denn, dass die Wissenschaften entstanden und gross geworden
waren, wenn ihnen nicht Zauberer, Alchimisten, Astrologen and Hexen
vorangelaufen waren als die, welche erst Durst, Hunger und Wohlgeschmack
an verborgenen und verbotenen Machten schaffen mussten?

Do you believe then that the sciences would ever have arisen and become
great if there had not beforehand been magicians, alchemists, astrologers
and wizards, who thirsted and hungered after abscondite and forbidden
powers?

Die frohliche Wissenschaft 1 886, IV

Florence Nightingale 1820-1910

4 [Of her] Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her
religion. For her Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation
copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence
Nightingale believed — and in all the actions of her life acted upon that
belief— that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided
by statistical knowledge. The legislator — to say nothing of the politician —
too often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she went further; she
held that the universe — including human communities — was evolving in
accordance with a divine plan; that it was man’s business to endeavour to
understand this plan and guide his actions in sympathy with it. But to
understand God’s thoughts, she held we must study statistics, for these are
the measure of His purpose. Thus the study of statistics was for her a
religious duty.

in Karl Pearson The life, letters and labours of Francis Ga/ton vol 2, 1924 (London: Cambridge
UP). Isis 8 186

Novalis [Friedrich von Hardenberg] 1772-1801

5 Die Mathematik ist das Leben der Gotter.

Mathematics is the life of the gods.

113 Julius Robert Oppenheimer

Charles Kay Ogden 1889-1957

1 The belief that words have a meaning of their own account is a relic of
primitive word magic, and it is still a part of the air we breathe in nearly
every discussion.

The Meaning of Meaning 1923 (London: Kegan Paul)

Charles Kay Ogden and Ivor Armstrong Richards 1889-1957 and 1 893—
2 The gostak distims the doshes.

[There is an excellent science-fiction story on this theme]

The Meaning of Meaning 1923 (London: Kegan Paul)

Henry Oldenburg ca 1626-1678

3 I acknowledge that the jealousy about the first authors of experiments
which you speak of, is not groundless ; and therefore offer myself to register
all those you, or any person, shal 1 please to communicate as new, with that
fidelity, which both the honour of my relation to the Royal Society (which
is highly concerned in such experiments) and my own inclinations, do
strongly oblige me to.

[The first editor of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society writing to Robert Boyle]

Isis 1940 31 321

Bernard More Oliver 1916—

4 It is time that science, having destroyed the religious basis for morality,
accepted the obligation to provide a new and rational basis for human
behaviour — a code of ethics concerned with man’s needs on earth, not his
rewards in heaven.

Towards a New Morality in IEEE Spectrum 1 972 9 52

Omar Khayyam ca 1050-ca 1123

5 Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great Arguement
About it and about : but everymore
Came out by the same door as in I went.

The Rubiyat 1859, transl Edward Fitzgerald, 1.28

Julius Robert Oppenheimer 1904-1967

6 In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstate-
ment can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a
knowledge which they cannot lose.

[Lecture at MIT 25 November 1947]

Physics in the Contemporary World (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP)

7 There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top
problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that l
lost long ago.

8 There floated through my mind a line from the Bhagamd-Gita in which
Krishna is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty: ‘I am

114 Julius Robert Oppenheimer

become death, the shatterer of worlds’. I think we all had this feeling more
or less.

[On 16 July 1945, at the test of the first atomic bomb — Trinity. The previous lines of the
Bhagavad-Gita are:

If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst into the sky,
that would be like
the splendour of the Mighty One]

in N P Davis Lawrence and Oppenheimer 1969 (London: Cape)

1 When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it
and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your
technical success.

in R W Reid Tongues of Conscience: Weapons Research and the Scientist's Dilemma 1 969
(New York: Walker)

Martin Oppenheimer 1930—

2 Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.

Urban Guerilla (London: Quadrangle)

Jose Ortega y Gasset 1883-1955

3 Contemporary science, with its system and methods, can put blockheads
C tontos ) to good use.

Obras Comp/etas. Revista de Occidente 1 958 6 1 43

George Orwell 1903-1950

4 In a way it is even humiliating to watch . . . miners working. It raises in
you a momentary doubt about your own status as an ‘intellectual’ and a
superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while
you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that
superior persons can remain superior. You and I and the editors of the
Times Literary Supplement, and the Poets and the Archbishop of
Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants — all of us really
owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground . . .
with their throats full of . . . dust, driving their shovels forward with arms
and belly muscles of steel.

Down the Mines in The Road to Wigan Pier 1937 (London: Seeker & Warburg)

5 Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present con-
trols the past.

Nineteen eighty-four 1949 (London: Seeker & Warburg)

[Sir] William Osier 1849-1919

6 In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the
man to whom the idea first occurs.

Probably Aequanimitas with other Addresses in Books and Men

Ovid 43 bc-ad 17

7 Nihil est toto, quo perstet, in orbe

Cuncta fluunt, omnisque vagans format ur imago
Ipsa quoque odsidue labuntur tempora motu.

115

Vilfredo Pareto

There is nothing in the whole world which is permanent

Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing

nature ;

The ages themselves glide by in constant movement.

Metamorphoses XV, i, 1 77

Axel Gustafsson [Count] Oxenstierna 1583-1654

1 Nescis, mi fili, quant ilia ratione mundus regatur.

You don't know, my dear boy, with what little reason the world is
governed.

[Sir] James Paget 1814-1899

2 You will find that fatigue has a larger share in the promotion and trans-
mission of disease than any other single condition you can name.

Science in War 1940 (London: Penguin)

Bernard Palissy 1510-1589

3 You must know that, in order to manage well a kiln full of pottery, even
when it is glazed, you must control the fire by so careful a philosophy that
there would be no spirit however noble which would not be much tried
and often disappointed. As to the manner of filling your kiln, a singular
geometry is needed .... The arts for which compass, ruler, numbers,
weights and measures are needed should not be called mechanics.

[Palissy was the potter who found science for himself]

L'Art de Terre in Oeuvres Completes Paris, 1884

George Paloczi-Horvath 1908-1973

4 Students of Soviet affairs know how difficult it is to foretell the Soviet past.

Khrushchev 1960 (Boston, Mass: Little, Brown)

Paracelsus [Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim] 1493-1541

5 To each elemental being the element in which it lives is transparent,
invisible and respirable, as the atmosphere to ourselves.

F Hartmann The Life of .. . Paracelsus 1896, London, 2nd edn

6 What is accomplished with fire is alchemy, whether in the furnace or the
kitchen stove.

in J Bronowski The Ascent of Man 1 975 (London: BBC)

Vilfredo Pareto 1848-1923

7 Give me fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own
corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.

[Comment on Kepler]

8 In a dispute between two chemists there is a judge; Experience. In a
dispute between a Moslem and a Christian, who is the judge? Nobody.

The Mind and Society

116 [Sir] Alan Sterling Parkes

[Sir] Alan Sterling Parkes 1900-

1 ... no woman should be kept on the Pill for 20 years until, in fact, a
sufficient number have been kept on the Pill for 20 years.

Nature 1 970 226 187

Cyril Northcote Parkinson 1909-

2 Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
(Parkinson’s First Law).

Parkinson's Law 1957 (London: Murray)

3 Expenditure rises to meet income (Parkinson’s Second Law).

In Laws and Outlaws 1 962

4 Expansion means complexity, and complexity decay (Parkinson’s Third
Law).

In Laws and Outlaws 1 962

5 The Law of Triviality :

Briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will
be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

Parkinson's Law 1957 (London: Murray)

Talcott Parsons 1902-

6 Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural
tradition. They mutually support one another — only in certain types of
society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and
healthy development and application of science such a society cannot
function properly.

The Social System 1951 (New York: Free Press) ch VIII

Blaise Pascal 1623-1662

7 [I feel] engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing,
and which know nothing of me, I am terrified .... The eternal silence of
these infinite spaces alarms me.

Pens6es 1 657

Louis Pasteur 1822-1895

8 Dans les champs de I’observation, I’hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares.
In the field of observation, chance only favours those minds which have
been prepared.

Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911, 1 1th edn. vol 20

9 11 faut de toute necessite que des actions dissymetriques president pendant la
vie a 1’ elaboration des vrais principes immediats naturels dissymetriques.
Quelle peut etre la nature de ces actions dissymetriques? Je pense, quant a
moi, qu'elles sont d'ordre cosmique. L'univers est un ensemble dissymetrique
et je suis persuade que la vie, telle qu'elle se manifeste a nous, est fonction de
la dissymetrie de I'univers ou des consequences qu'elle entraine. L'univers est
dissymetrique.

117

Pelagius [Morgan]

It is inescapable that asymmetric forces must be operative during the
synthesis of the first asymmetric natural products. What might these forces
be? I, for my part, think that they are cosmological. The universe is
asymmetric and I am persuaded that life, as it is known to us, is a direct
result of the asymmetry of the universe or of its indirect consequences. The
universe is asymmetric.

Comptes Rendus de TAcad6mie des Sciences 1 June 1 874. Reprinted Oeuvres 1 , 361 . In J B S
Haldane Nature 1 960 185 87

1 There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name
applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound
together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.

Pourquoi la France n'a pas trouv6 d'hommes sup6rieurs au moment du peril in Revue
Scientifique 1871

Wolfgang Pauli 1900-1958

2 Ich habe nichts dagegen wenn Sie langsam denken, Herr Doktor, aber ich
babe etwas dagegen wenn Sie rascher publizieren als denken.

I don’t mind your thinking slowly : I mind your publishing faster than you
think.

Attributed

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov 1849-1936

3 What can I wish to the youth of my country who devote themselves to

science? . . . Thirdly, passion. Remember that science demands from a man
all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be
passionate in your work and in your searching.

Bequest to Academic Youth 1 936

Karl Pearson 1857-1936

4 Modem science, as training the mind to an exact and impartial analysis of
facts, is an education specially fitted to promote citizenship.

The Grammar of Science 1911 (London: A & C Black)

5 The right to live does not connote the right of each man to reproduce his
kind .... As we lessen the stringency of natural selection, and more and
more of the weaklings and the unfit survive, we must increase the standard,
mental and physical, of parentage.

Darwinism, Medical Progress and Parentage 1912, University of London, University College
Eugenics Laboratory, 2nd edn

6 The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.

The Grammar of Science 191 1 (London: A & C Black)

Benjamin Peirce 1809-1880

7 Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions.

[Memoir read before the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. 1870]
American Journal of Mathematics 1 881 4 97

Pelagius [Morgan] ca 360 -ca 420

8 Si necessitatis est, peccatum non est; si voluntatis, vitari potest.

1 1 8 Pelagius [ Morgan ]

If it is a necessity, then it is not a sin; if it is optional, then it can be
avoided.

[The founder of the Pelagian heresy]

Pericles 5th Century bc

1 Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.

Funeral Oration 431 BC. Thucydides II, 41

Laurence Johnston Peter 1919—

2 The Peter Principle :

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
[Whence two sub-principles] — In time, every post tends to be occupied by
an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties. — Work is accom-
plished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of in-
competence.

The Peter Principle 1969 (New York: Morrow)

[Sir] William Petty 1623-1687

3 Nor do I doubt if the most formidable armies ever heere upon earth is a
sort of soldiers who for their smallness are not visible.

[On microbes, 1 640]

The Petty Papers 1927 (London: Constable)

Physical Review Letters

4 Scientific discoveries are not the proper subject for newspaper scoops and
all media of mass communication should have equal opportunity for
simultaneous access to the information. In the future we may reject papers
whose main contents have been published previously in the daily press.

[Editorial by Professor Samuel A Goudsmit, 1 January 1960. Since Professor Goudsmit's retire-
ment as editor 'the publicity- hungry high-energy physicists have succeeded in getting this old
policy rescinded']

Jean Piaget 1896—

5 In short, the notion of structure is comprised of three key ideas : the idea of
wholeness, the idea of transformation, and the idea of self-regulation.

Structuralism transl C Maschler, 1971 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

Pablo [Ruiz y] Picasso 1881-1973

6 The against comes before the for.

7 Je ne cherche pas; je trouve.

I do not search; I find.

Etude de femme in P Oster Nouveau Dictionnaire de Citations Franfaises 1 970 (Paris: Librairie
Hachette, Tchou Editeurs)

Charles Santiago Sanders Pierce 1839-1914

8 The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit.

Illustrations of the Logic of Science, //in Popular Science Monthly. NY January 1878

[Sir] Alfred Brian Pippard 1920-

9 The value of a formalism lies not only in the range of problems to which

119 Plato

it can be successfully applied, but equally in the degree to which it encour-
ages physical intuition in guessing the solution of intractable problems.

Physics Bulletin 1 969 20 455

Robert Pirsig 1929-

The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological
needs is not to run away from technology, that’s impossible. The way to
resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that
prevent a real understanding of what technology is — not an exploitation of
nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of
creation that transcends both.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 1974 (London: Bodley Head)

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a
digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top
of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 1974 (London: Bodley Head)

A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and
a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of
the art of rationality itself.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 1 974 (London: Bodley Head)

[Pope] Pius IX 1792-1878

4 Syllabus of the principal errors of our time ... 12. The decrees of the
Apostolic See and of the Roman congregation impede the true progress of
science.

[21 December 1863]

in Dogmatic Canons and Decrees 1912 (Old Greenwich. Conn: Devin-Adair)

Pope] Pius XII 1876-1958

5 The Church welcomes technological progress and receives it with love, for
it is an indubitable fact that technological progress comes from God and,
therefore, can and must lead to Him.

[Christmas Message, 1953]

6 One Galileo in two thousand years is enough.

[On being asked to proscribe the works of Teilhard de Chardin]

Attributed. See Stafford Beer Platform for Change 1975 (Chichester: Wiley)

Max Planck 1858-1947

7 An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually win-
ning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes
Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that
the growing generation is familiarised with the ideas from the beginning.

in G Holton Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought 1973 (Cambridge. Mass: Harvard UP)

Plato ca 429-347 bc

8 He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.
in Francis Bacon Novum Organum 1620, Book II, 26

2

3

1 20 Plato

1 The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch.

The Republic VII, 528

2 We must endeavour to persuade the principal men of our State to go and
learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, . . . but for the sake of military use . . .

The Republic VII, 525

3 Let no one ignorant of geometry enter my door.

in John Tzetzes (ca 111 0-ca 1 1 80) Chiliad 8, 972

4 He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the
diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.

in Sophie Germain M6moire sur les surfaces 6/astiques

5 Socrates: Shall we set down astronomy among the subjects of study?
Glaucon: I think so, to know something about the seasons, the months
and the years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and
for navigation.

Socrates: It amuses me to see how afraid you are, lest the common herd of
people should accuse you of recommending useless studies.

The Republic VII, 527

6 Theaetetus: Science is sensation.

Socrates: You give an opinion that cannot be despised, since it was
Protagoras’s. Yet he expressed it in another way, by saying that man was
the measure of all things.

Theaetetus 1 52

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov 1856-1918

7 Bourgeois scientists make sure that their theories are not dangerous to
God or to capital.

Karl Marx

Plutarch ca 46-ca 127

8 But what most of all afflicted Marcellus was the death of Archimedes. For
it chanced that he was by himself, working out some problem with the aid
of a diagram, and having fixed his thoughts and his eyes as well upon the
matter of his study, he was not aware of the incursion of the Romans, or
of the capture of the city. Suddenly a soldier came upon him and ordered
him to go with him to Marcellus. This Archimedes refused to do until he
had worked out his problem and established his demonstration, whereupon
the soldier flew into a passion, drew his sword, and dispatched him.
However, it is generally agreed that Marcellus was afflicted at his death,
and turned away from his slayer as from a polluted person, and sought out
the kindred of Archimedes and paid them honour.

Lives transl J & W Langhorne. 1876 (London: Chatto)

9 Plato said that God geometrises continually.

Convivialum disputationum 8, 2

121 Michael Polanyi

1 You know, of course, that Lycurgus expelled arithmetical proportion from
Lacedaemon, because of its democratic and rabble-rousing character. He
introduced geometric proportion, . . .

Mora/ia Loeb edn, vol IX

Po Chu-i 772-846

2 ‘Those who speak know nothing;

Those who know are silent’.

These words, as I am told,

Were spoken by Lao-Tze.

If we are to believe that Lao-Tze
Was himself one who knew,

How comes it that he wrote a book
Of five thousand words?

transl Arthur Waley Chinese Poems 1946 (London: Allen & Unwin)

Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849

3 Science . . . hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

Sonnet To Science ca 1827

Jules Henri Poincare 1854-1912

4 Les fails ne parlent pas.

Facts do not speak.

5 Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of
facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.

La Science et i’Hypoth&se 1902 (Paris: Flammarion)

Michael Polanyi 1891-1976

6 The pursuit of science can be organized ... in no other manner than by
granting complete independence to all mature scientists. They will then
distribute themselves over the whole field of possible discoveries, each
applying his own special ability to the task that appears most profitable to
him. The function of public authorities is not to plan research, but only to
provide opportunities for its pursuit. All they have to do is to provide
facilities for every good scientist to follow his own interest in science.

The Logic of Liberty 1951 (Chicago, III: University of Chicago Press)

7 The Republic of Science shows us an association of independent initiatives,
combined towards an indeterminate achievement. It is disciplined and
motivated by serving a traditional authority, but this authority is dynamic;
its continued existence depends on its constant self-renewal through the
originality of its followers.

The Republic of Science is a Society of Explorers. Such a society strives
towards an unknown future, which it believes to be accessible and worth
achieving. In the case of scientists, the explorers strive towards a hidden
reality, for the sake of intellectual satisfaction. And as they satisfy them-
selves, they enlighten all men and are thus helping society to fulfil its
obligation towards intellectual self-improvement.

Minerva 19621 54-73

122 Marco Polo

Marco Polo ca 1254-1324

1 Here is told of the city of Kinsai [Hangkow] .... In other streets, live
harlots, of whom there are so many that I dare not say the number ....
These women are very clever and expert in their allurements and endear-
ments, and ever have appropriate words ready for every kind of person.

So, when foreigners have once tasted of them, they remain, so to speak,
beside themselves, and are so taken by their sweetness and charm, that they
can never forget them. Thus it is that, when they return home, they say
they have been in Kinsai, namely in the City of Heaven, and long to be
able to return there. In yet other streets live all the leeches and all the
astrologers, the latter of whom also teach reading and writing.

The Travels of Marco Polo ed L F Benedetto, trans! A Ricci, 1931 (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul)

Polybius ca 204 -ca 122 bc

2 Whenever it is possible to find out the cause of what is happening, one
should not have recourse to the gods.

in K Von Fritz The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity 1954 (New York: Columbia UP)

[Saint] Polycarp ca 69 -ca 155

3 In all these monstrous demons is seen an art hostile to God.

[On the clepsydra)

Georges Pompidou 1911-1974

4 There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most
pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is
with technicians.

Sunday Telegraph 26 May 1968

Alexander Pope 1688-1744

5 Epitaph on Newton;

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night :

God said, ‘Let Newton be.’ and all was light.

[Added by Sir John Collings Squire:

It did not last: the Devil shouting 'Ho.

Let Einstein be.' restored the status quo]

The Works of Alexander Pope 1871 (London: Murray)

6 For Forms of Government let fools contest ;

What’er is best administered is best.

An Essay of Man III, line 303

7 How index-learning turns no student pale,

Yet holds the eel of science by the tail.

The Dunciad Book I. line 279

8 Lo, the poor Indian : whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind:

His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the Solar Walk or Milky Way.

An Essay on Man I. line 99

123 Ezra Pound

1 Not chaos-like together wash’d and bruis'd,

But, as the world, harmoniously confus’d:

Where order in variety we see,

And where, though all things differ, all agree.

Windsor Forest

2 One science only will one genius fit;

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

An Essay on Criticism part I. line 60

3 Order is Heaven’s first law.

An Essay on Man IV. line 49

4 Those Rules of old discovered, not devised
Are Nature still, but Nature methodized;

Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained

By the same Laws which first herself ordained.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 1971. Autumn, pi 05

5 Why has not man a microscopic eye?

For this plain reason, man is not a fly.

An Essay on Man I. line 1 93

[Sir] Karl Raimund Popper 1902-

6 But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is
capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not
the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion
of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system
that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive
sense: but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be
singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be
possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.

The Logic of Scientific Discovery 1959 (London: Hutchinson)

7 Science is not a system of certain, or well-established, statements; nor is it
a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality .... And our
guesses are guided by the unscientific the metaphysical (though biologically
explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover — discover.
Like Bacon, we might describe our own contemporary science — ‘the method
of reasoning which men now ordinarily apply to nature’ — as consisting of
‘anticipations, rash and premature’ and as ‘prejudices’.

The Logic of Scientific Discovery 1959 (London: Hutchinson)

Ezra Pound 1885-1972

8 ‘You damn sadist,’ said mr cummings,

‘you try to make people think.’

Canto 89 in The Cantos of Ezra Pound 1956 (London: Faber & Faber and New York: New
Directions) © Ezra Pound. 1956

9 Of all those young women not one has enquired the cause of the world
Nor the modus of lunar eclipses.

Homage to Sextus Propertius in The Collected Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound 1 926 (London:

Faber & Faber and New York: New Directions) © Ezra Pound. 1926

124 Ezra Pound

1 j£, a gnomon,

Our science is from the watching of shadows . . .

Canto 85 in The Cantos of Ezra Pound 1956 (London: Faber & Faber and New York: New
Directions) © Ezra Pound, 1 956

Cedric Price 1 934-

2 The reason for architecture is to encourage . . . people ... to behave,
mentally and physically, in ways they had previously thought impossible.

Exhibition, RIBA Heinz Gallery, 8 October 1975

Derek John de Solla Price 1922-

3 The disciplines which analyse science have been generated piecemeal, but
show many signs of beginning to cohere into a whole which is greater than
the sum of its parts. This new study might be called 'history, philosophy,
sociology, psychology, economics, political science and operations research
(etc) of science, technology, medicine (etc).

in The Science of Science ed M Goldsmith anr 4 / L Mackay, 1964 (London: Souvenir Press)

4 Science is not just the fruit of the tree of knowledge, it is the tree itself.

Lecture, London. 1 964

125

Pierre Joseph Proudhon

1 Using any reasonable definition of a scientist, we can say that between 80
and 90 per cent of all the scientists that have ever lived are alive now. Now
depending on what one measures and how, the crude size of science in
manpower or in publications tends to double within a period of 10 to 15
years.

Little Science. Big Science 1 963 (New York: Columbia UP)

Don Krasher Price 1910-

2 Science . . . cannot exist on the basis of a treaty of strict non-aggression
with the rest of society; from either side, there is no defensible frontier.
Government and Science 1954 (New York: New York UP)

Joseph Priestley 1733-1804

3 It was ill policy in Leo the Tenth to patronise polite literature. He was
cherishing an enemy in disguise. And the English hierarchy (if there be
anything unsound in its constitution) has equal reason to tremble even at
an air pump or an electrical machine.

Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air 1775-1786

Proclus Diadochus 412—485

4 It is well known that the man who first made public the theory of irrationals
perished in a shipwreck in order that the inexpressible and unimaginable
should ever remain veiled. And so the guilty man, who fortuitously touched
on and revealed this aspect of living things, was taken to the place where
he began and there is for ever beaten by the waves.

[Attributed]

Scholium to Book X of Euclid V, 417

Protagoras ca 481-fa 411 bc

5 Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are, of things
that are not, that they are not.

in Diogenes Laertius Vitae Philosophicus IX, 51

Of the gods I know nothing, whether they exist or do not exist: nor what
they are like in form. Many things stand in the way of knowledge — the
obscurity of the subject, the brevity of human life.

in Diogenes Laertius Vitae Philosophicus IX. 51

Pierre Joseph Proudhon 1809-1865

7 [De meme qu'il y a] une science des phenomenes physiques qui ne repose que
sur V observation des faits, il doit exister aussi une science de la societe,
absolue, rigoureuse, basee sur la nature de Phomme et de ses facultes, et sur
leurs rapports, science qu'il ne faut pas inventer mais decouvrir.

Inasmuch as there is a science of physical phenomena, which rests only on
the observation of facts, there ought also to exist a science of society which
should be absolute and rigorous and based on the nature of man, his
faculties and their inter-relationships. This should be a science to be
discovered, not invented.

L 'Utility de la Calibration du Dimanche 1 839

126 Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust 1871-1922

1 Distances are only the relation of space to time and vary with that relation.

Cities of the Plain I, 3

Francois Quesnay 1694-1774

2 Commerce, like industry, is merely a branch of agriculture. It is agriculture
which furnishes the material of industry and commerce and which pays
both . . .

Grains in Encyclopedia

Adolphe Quetelet 1796-1874

3 ‘The average man’.

[The invention of the concept]

4 The more progress physical sciences make, the more they tend to enter the
domain of mathematics, which is a kind of centre to which they all con-
verge. We may even judge of the degree of perfection to which a science
has arrived by the facility with which it may be submitted to calculation.

in E Mailly Eulogy on Quetelet 1 874, Smithsonian Report

Francois Rabelais 1494-1553

5 ... quest io subtillissima, utrum chimera in vacuo bombinans possit comedere
secundas intentiones.

... a most subtle question whether a chimaera bombinating in a vacuum
can devour second intentions. (Oxford English Dictionary.)

Tiers Livre Book II. vii

6 Nature abhors a vacuum.

[Quoting the Latin proverb natura vacuum abhorret ]

Gargantua Book 1. ch 5

7 Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.

Gargantua's letter to Pantagruel

Isador Isaac Rabi 1 898-

8 There isn’t a scientific community. It is a culture. It is a very undisciplined
organisation.

1965. In D S Greenberg The Politics of Pure Science 1967 (New York: New American Library)

© D S Greenberg. 1 967

[Sir] Walter Alexander Raleigh 1861-1922

9 In an examination those who do not wish to know ask questions of those
who cannot tell.

Some Thoughts on Examinations

Srinivasa Ramanujan 1887-1920

10 G H Hardy: I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at

1 27 Lewis Fry Richardson

Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729 and remarked that the number
seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavour-
able omen. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘it is a very interesting number; it is the small-
est number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.’

in G H Hardy Ramanujan 1940 (London: Cambridge UP)

James Arthur Ramsay 1909-

1 The mammal is a highly-tuned physiological machine carrying out with

superlative efficiency what the lower animals are content to muddle through
with.

Anatol Rapoport 1911—

2 One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls
and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with
each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will
be champion.

Strategy and Conscience 1 964 (New York: Harper & Row)

Alastair Reid 1926-

3 ‘Counting’ : Ounce, dice, trice, quartz, quince, sago, serpent, oxygen,
nitrogen, denim.

Ounce, dice, trice 1956 (Boston. Mass: Little, Brown)

Ivor Armstrong Richards 1 893—

4 The properties of the instruments or apparatus employed enter into . . .
belong with and confine the scope of the investigation.

Speculative Instruments in Internal Colloquies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

Lewis Fry Richardson 1881-1953
5 Bigfger] whirls have little whirls,

128 Lewis Fry Richardson

That feed on their velocity;

And little whirls have lesser whirls,

And so on to viscosity.

[Summarizing his classic paper The Supply of Energy from and to Atmospheric Eddies (1920)]

Charles Robert Richet 1850-1935

1 I possess every good quality, but the one that distinguishes me above all is
modesty.

[Nobel Laureat for medicine. 1 91 3]

The Natural History of a Savanf transl Oliver Lodge. 1927 (New York: Doran)

[Baron] Peter Ritchie-Calder 1906-

2 The academic and basic scientists are ‘The Makers-Possible’; the applied
scientists and the technologists are ‘The Makers-to-Happen’, and the tech-
nicians ‘The Makers-to-Work’. And nowadays, with operations research,
market research, quality control, etc, the commercial scientists might be
called ‘The Makers-to-Pay’.

The Evolution of Science 1963 (Paris: UNESCO/Mentor)

Jacques Rohault 17th Century

3 ... it was by just such a hazard, as if a man should let fall a handful of
sand upon a table and the particles of it should be so ranged that we could
read distinctly on it a whole page of Virgil's Aenead.

Traits de Physique Paris, 1 671 . Transl 1 723, II

Jules Romains 1 885—

4 Les gens bien portants sont des inalades qui s'ignorent.

Every man who feels well is a sick man neglecting himself.

Knock, ou !e Triomphe de la M6decine 1923 (Paris: Gallimard)

[Sir] Ronald Ross 1857-1932

5 This day relenting God

Hath placed within my hand
A wondrous thing; and God
Be praised. At His command,

Seeking His secret deeds
With tears and toiling breath,

I find thy cunning seeds,

0 million-murdering Death.

1 know this little thing
A myriad men will save,

O Death where is thy sting?

Thy victory, O Grave?

[Describing his discovery of the life-cycle of the malaria parasite. 1897]
Poems by Ronald Ross ISIS (London: E Mathews & Marrot)

6

Now twenty years ago
This day we found the thing;
With science and with skill

129

John Ruskin

We found; then came the sting —

What we with endless labour won
The thick world scorned;

Not worth a word today —

Not worth remembering.

[Ross received the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1902]
Written 20 August 1917

Jean Rostand 1 894-

1 Ou apprendre le metier de Dieu ?
Who can teach us God’s business?

2 Eire adulie, c'est etre seul.

To be adult is to be alone.

PensGes d'un bio/ogiste (Paris: Stock)

Theodore Roszak 1 933—

3 Nature composes some of her loveliest poems for the microscope and
telescope.

Where the Wasteland Ends 1972 (London: Faber & Fabar)

Joseph Roux 1834-1886

4 Science is for those who learn; poetry for those who know.

Meditations of a Parish Priest 1

Henry Augustus Rowland 1848-1901

5 He who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is the
benefactor of mankind, but he who obscurely worked to find the laws of
such growth is the intellectual superior as well as the greater benefactor of
mankind.

in D S Greenberg The Politics of Pure Science 1967 (New York: New American Library) © D S
Greenberg. 1 967

Count Rumford [Benjamin Thompson] 1753-1814

6 It frequently happens that in the ordinary affairs and occupations of life,
opportunities present themselves of contemplating some of the most curious
operations of nature.

in H A Bent The Second Law 1965 (New York: Oxford UP)

John Ruskin 1819-1900

7 Lily: ‘We looked at the books about crystals but they are so dreadful.’

The Ethics of the Dust, Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation 1 866
(London: Smith Elder)

8 May: ‘Oh. Have the crystals faults like us?’

L: ‘Certainly, May. Their best virtues are shown in fighting their faults.

And some have a great many faults; and some are very naughty crystals
indeed.’

The Ethics of the Dust, Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation 1 866
(London: Smith Elder)

130 [Lord] Bertrand Russell

[Lord] Bertrand Russell 1872-1970

1 ... the general public has derived the impression that physics confirms
practically the whole of the Book of Genesis. I do not myself think that the
moral to be drawn from modern science is at all what the general public
has thus been led to suppose. In the first place, the men of science have not
said nearly as much as they are thought to have said, and in the second
place what they have said in the way of support for traditional religious
beliefs has been said by them not in their cautious, scientific capacity, but
rather in their capacity of good citizens, anxious to defend virtue and
property.

The Scientific Outlook 1931 (London: Allen & Unwin)

2 Animals studied by Americans rush about frantically, with an incredible
display of hustle and pep, and at last achieve the desired result by chance.
Animals observed by Germans sit still and think, and at last evolve the
solution out of their inner consciousness.

[On Thorndike and Koehler]

3 Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he
was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by
examining his wives’ mouths.

The Impact of Science on Society 1952 (London: Allen &. Unwin)

4 Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a
long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily
contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion . . .?

Lloyd Roberts Lecture Can a Scientific Community be Stable? to the Royal Society of Medicine,
29 November 1949

5 I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of
dominant groups rather than to make men happy.

[Replying to J B S Haldane's optimistic view expressed in Daedalus — Science and the Future ]
Icarus, crthe Future of Science 1925 (London: Kegan Paul)

6 The number of a class is the class of all classes similar to a given class.

Principles of Mathematics 1903 (New York: Cambridge UP)

7 Pure mathematics is the class of all propositions of the form p implies q,
where p and q are propositions containing one or more variables, the same
in the two propositions, and neither p nor q contains any constants except
logical constants .... The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is
one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been
established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the
analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

Principles of Mathematics 1903 (New York: Cambridge UP)

8 The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in
which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

Power: A New Social Analysis 1938 (New York: Norton)

9 With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand

131 George Alban Sac her

the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have
tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway
above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London: Allen & Unwin) Introduction

Henry Norris Russell 1877-1957

1 The pursuit of an idea is as exciting as the pursuit of a whale.

[Lord] Ernest Rutherford 1871-1937

2 Don’t let me catch anyone talking
about the Universe in my depart-
ment.

John Kendrew. BBC-3, 26 July 1968, 21,00 h
J D Bernal and the origin of life

3 If your experiment needs statistics,
you ought to have done a better
experiment.

in N T J Bailey The Mathematical Approach to
Biology and Medicine 1967 (New York: Wiley)

4 It is essential for men of science to
take an interest in the administration
of their own affairs or else the pro-
fessional civil servant will step in —
and then the Lord help you.

Bulletin of the Institute of Physics 1950 1 no. 1. cover

5 We haven’t the money, so we’ve got to think.

in R V Jones Bulletin of the Institute of Physics 1 962 1 3 1 02

6 [In answer to Stephen Leacock’s enquiry as to what he thought of Ein-
stein’s theory of relativity] Oh, that stuff. We never bother with

that in our work.

in Stephen Leacock Common Sense and the Universe

7 The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind
of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation
of these atoms is talking moonshine.

Physics Today 1970, October, p33

Gilbert Ryle 1900-

8 [There is no] Ghost in the Machine.

The Concept of A7;7)d1949 (London: Hutchinson)

George Alban Sacher 1917—

9 The brain is the organ of longevity.

[By its capacity to regulate the milieu intirieur ]

Perspectives in Experimental Gerontology 1 966 (Springfield, III: Thomas)

132 Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Antoine de Saint-Exupdry 1900-1944

1 L' avion est une machine sans doute, mais quel instrument d’ analyse! Cet
instrument nous a fait decouvrir le vrai visage de la terre .... Nous voila
done changes en physiciens, en biologistes, examinant ces civilisations qui
ornent des fonds de vallees .... Nous voila done jugeant I'homme a Fechelle
cosmique, V observant a trovers nos hublots, comme a trovers des instruments
d'etude. Nous voila relisant notre histoire.

The aeroplane is, of course, only a machine, but what an instrument of
analysis! This instrument has made us see the real face of the earth ....

Up here we are turned into physicists or biologists, studying the civilizations
which garnish the depths of the valleys .... Up here we are judging man
on a cosmic scale, observing him through our portholes, as through scien-
tific instruments. We are re-reading our own history.

Oeuvres d‘ Antoine de Saint-Exup6ry 1953 (Paris: Gallimard)

2 When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a
knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relation-
ships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never
known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.

Flight to Arras transl Lewis Galantiere (London: Heinemann)

Sakuma Shozan 1811-1864

3 Toyo dotoku, seiyo geijutsu.

Eastern ethics, Western techniques.

[The conditions for modernization at the Meiji Restoration]

[See Chang Chih-tung]

Abdus Salam 1926-

4 A1 Asuli writing in Bukhara some 900 years ago divided his pharmacopoeia
into two parts, ‘Diseases of the rich’ and ‘Diseases of the poor'.

Scientific World 1 963. no. 3, p9

Denis de Sallo 1626-1669

5 [First editor of the first scientific journal, writing in the first issue] Personne
ne doit trouver estrange de voir ici des opinions differentes des siennes, touch-
ant les sciences, puisqu’on fait profession de rapporter les sentiments des
autres sans les garantir . . .

Nobody should find it strange to see here opinions different from his own
concerning the sciences, because we aim to report the ideas of others
without guaranteeing them . . .

Journal des Scavans 1 665

Saif-ud-din Salman 15 th Century

6 [Working at the observatory of Ulugh Beg in Samarkand] Admonish me
not, my beloved father, for forsaking you thus in your old age and sojourn-
ing here at Samarkand. It is not that I covet the musk melons and the
grapes and the pomegranates of Samarkand ; it is not the shades of the
orchards on the banks of Zar-Afsham, that keep me here. I love my native
Kandahar and its tree-lined avenues even more and I pine to return. But

133 George Alfred Leon Sarton

forgive me, my exalted father, for my passion for knowledge. In Kandahar
there are no scholars, no libraries, no quadrants, no astrolabes. My star-
gazing excites nothing but ridicule and scorn. My countrymen care more
for the glitter of the sword than for the quill of the scholar. In my own
town I am a sad, a pathetic misfit. It is true, my respected father, so far
from home men do not rise from their seats to pay me homage when I
ride into the bazaar. But some day soon, all Samarkand will rise in respect
when your son will emulate Biruni and Tusi in learning and you too will
feel proud.

[Abdus Salam tells us that, alas! Salman never did get his PhD]
transl Abdus Salam in Minerva 1966 4 461-5

Carl Sandburg 1878-1967

1 When water turns ice does it
remember one time it was
water?

When ice turns back into
water does it remember it was
ice?

Metamorphosis in Honey and Salt * 963
(New York: Harcourt. Brace & World)
© Carl Sandburg, 1963

George Santayana 1863-1952

2 The empiricist . . . thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much
better at believing than at seeing.

Skepticism and Animat Faith 1955 (New York: Dover)

3 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The Life of Reason 1905 (New York: Scribners)

George Alfred Leon Sarton 1884-1956

4 Definition: Science is systematised positive knowledge, or what has been
taken as such at different ages and in different places.

Theorem: The acquisition and systematisation of positive knowledge are the
only human activities which are truly cumulative and progressive.

134 George Alfred Leon Sort on

Corollary: The history of science is the only history which can illustrate
the progress of mankind. In fact, progress has no definite and unquestion-
able meaning in other fields than the field of science.

The Study of the History of Science 1 957 (New York: Dover)

1 It is true that most men of letters and, I am sorry to add, not a few
scientists, know science only by its material achievements, but ignore its
spirit and see neither its internal beauty nor the beauty it extracts from the
bosom of nature. Now I would say that to find in the works of science of
the past, that which is not and cannot be superseded, is perhaps the most
important part of our quest. A true humanist must know the life of science
as he knows the life of art and the life of religion.

A History of Science vol II, 1959 (New York: Wiley)

2 Scientific activity is the only one which is obviously and undoubtedly
cumulative and progressive.

The History of Science and the History of Civilization 1 930 (New York: Dover)

3 The great intellectual division of mankind is not along geographical or
racial lines, but between those who understand and practice the experi-
mental method and those who do not understand and do not practice it.

in B Farrington Science and Politics in the Ancient World 1965 (London: Allen & Unwin)

George Savile [Lord Halifax] 1633-1695

4 He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very
few things.

Complete Works of George Savile ed W Raleigh, 1912

5 The struggle for knowledge hath a pleasure in it like that of wrestling with
a fine woman.

Complete Works of George Savile ed W Raleigh, 1912

Friedrich von Schiller 1759-1805

6 Einem ist sie [Wissenschaft] die hohe, die himmlische Gottin, dem anderen
Eine tiichtige Kuh, die ihn mit Butter versorgt.

To one science is an exalted goddess; to another it is a cow which provides
him with butter.

Xenien

7 Nur die Fiille fiihrt zur Klarheit,

End im Abgrund wohnt die fVahrheit.

Only wholeness leads to clarity,

And truth lies in the abyss.

[Favourite saying of Niels Bohr]

Erwin Schroedinger 1887-1961

8 ... a living organism . . . feeds upon negative entropy .... Thus the device

by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of

135 William Shakespeare

orderliness ( = fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually
sucking orderliness from its environment.

What is life? 1944 (London: Cambridge UP)

Scottish Proverb

1 Guid gear gangs intae sma bouk.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4 bc-ad 65

2 In my own time there have been inventions of this sort, transparent win-
dows, tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building,
short-hand, which has been carried to such a perfection that a writer can
keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is
drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office
to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form
the soul. Non est, inquam, instrumentorum ad usus necessarios opifex.
Epistoiae morales 90

3 [Vice] is still in its infancy, and yet on it we bestow all our efforts: our eyes
and our hands are its slaves. Who attends the school of wisdom now? . . .
Who has regard for philosophy or any liberal pursuit, except when a rainy
day comes round to interrupt the games, and it may be wasted without
loss? And so the many sects of philosophers are all dying out for lack of
successors. The Academy, both old and new, has left no disciple.

in John Clarke Physical Science in the Times of Nero: Being a Translation of the Quaestiones
Natura/es of Seneca 1910 (London: Macmillan)

Severinus 7th Century

4 Go, my sons, buy stout shoes, climb the mountains, search . . . the deep
recesses of the earth .... In this way and in no other will you arrive at a
knowledge of the nature and properties of things.

William Shakespeare 1564-1616

5 ... we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar
things supernatural and causeless.

All’s Well that Ends Well II, iii

6 Plutus himself,

That knows the tinct and multiplying med’cine,

Hath not in nature’s mystery more science
Than I have in this ring.

All's Well That Ends Well V. iii

7 It is as easy to count atomies, as to resolve the propositions of a lover.

As You Like It III, ii

8 ... a traitorous innovator,

A foe to the public weal.

Corioianus III, i

1 36 William Shakespeare

1 What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?

1 Henry IV II. iv

2 And time that takes survey of all the world
Must have a stop.

1 Henry IV V. iv

3 When we mean to build,

We first survey the plot, then draw the model ;

And when we see the figure of the house.

Then we must rate the cost of the erection ; . . .

2 Henry IV I. iii

4 Even so our houses and ourselves and children
Have lost, or do not learn from want of time.

The sciences that should become our country;

But grow like savages, . . .

Henry V V. ii

5 Thou hast most traitrously corrupted the youth
Of the realm in erecting a grammar-school.

2 Henry VI IV, vii

6 And nature must obey necessity.

Julius Caesar IV. iii

7 If you can look into the seeds of time.

And say which grain will grow and which will not.

Speak then to me . . .

Macbeth I, iii

8 ... we but teach

Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
To plague the inventor.

Macbeth I. vii

9 Macbeth: [The labour we delight] in physics pain.

Macbeth II. iii

10 For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.

Much Ado about Nothing V. i

11 ... physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh; . . .

The Winter's Tale I, i

12 Sir Toby: Does not our lives consist of the four elements?

Sir Andrew: Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of eating and

1 37 Percy Bysshe Shelley

drinking.

Sir Toby: Th’art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink

Twelfth Night II. iii

George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950

1 All problems are finally scientific problems.

in Preface to The Doctor's Dilemma

2 The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point
than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happi-
ness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

in Preface to Androcles and the Lion

3 Getting patronage is the whole art of life. A man cannot have a career
without it.

Captain Brassbound’s Conversion 1906. Act III

4 Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth
the effort.

in Preface to Three Plays by Brieux

5 Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all
forms of life, and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world
of magnetic atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole, arrang-
ing itself by attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline structure. Such a
picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers oppressed by the bloody
disorders of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of thought, they
find in the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more
dramatic and less childish than the happiness found by mathematicians in
abstract numbers, because they see in the crystals beauty and movement
without the corrupting appetites of fleshly vitality.

in Preface to Back to Methuselah

[Bishop] Fulton Sheen 1895-

6 An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.

Look 14 December 1955

Charles S Sheldon

7 What is the long-run psychological cost to us of having the backside of the
Moon dotted with Soviet names? Will they do the same for Mars? To
pretend that national prestige is unimportant is to show a limited aware-
ness of historical forces in society.

National Goals in Space. NASA in Proceedings of the Working Conference on Space Nutrition
and Related Waste Problems, Tampa, Florida

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822
8 ... happiness

138 Percy Bysshe Shelley

And science dawn though late upon the earth ; . . .

Queen Mab VIII. 11.227-8

1 The gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.

The Defence of Poetry

2 He gave man speech, and speech created thought,

Which is the measure of the universe;

And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven.

Prometheus Unbound 1 820

Herbert Alexander Simon 1916—

3 A man, viewed as a behaving system, is quite simple. The apparent com-
plexity of his behaviour over time is largely a reflection of the complexity
of the environment in which he finds himself.

The Sciences of the Artificial 1969 (Cambridge. Mass: The MIT Press)

[Sir] John Sinclair 1754-1835

4 At present there are a greater number of intelligent practical chemists in
Scotland, in proportion to the population, than perhaps in any other
country in the world.

1814

Burrhus Frederic Skinner 1904-

5 ‘The science of behaviour is full of special twists like that,’ said Frazier.

‘It’s the science of science a special discipline concerned with talking about
talking and knowing about knowing. Well, there’s a motivational twist too.
Science in general emerged from a competitive culture. Most scientists are
still inspired by competition or at least supported by those who are. But
when you come to apply the methods of science to the special study of
human behaviour, the competitive spirit commits suicide. It discovers the
extraordinary fact that in order to survive, we must in the last analysis, not
compete.’

Walden Two 1948 (New York: Macmillan)

6 Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.

New Scientist 21 May 1 964

Martyn Skinner 1906-

7 For we are like the Chinese in reverse.

Our feeling for the future’s so prodigious
We might be termed descendant worshippers.

The Return of Arthur 1966 (London: Chapman & Hall)

Samuel Smiles 1812-1904

8 We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and
probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Self-help ch 1 1

1 39 [Lord] Charles Percy Snow

Adam Smith 1723-1790

1 The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement
are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that
with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion than had originally been
employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first philo-
sophical systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.

Essay on the Principles which Lead and Direct Philosophical Inquiries

2 Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

Wealth of Nations V. part 3.3

Cyril Stanley Smith 1903-

3 Matter is a holograph of itself in its own internal radiation.

Letter to A L Mackay. 1 968

Sydney Smith 1771-1845

4 Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.

[Of William Whewell]

in Isaac Todhunter William Whewell (Farnborough: Gregg International)

[General] Walter Bedell Smith 1895-1961

5 My big job is to get the best brains in the country, persuade them to leave
fame and fortune for a government job where they’ll study secrets they
can’t even discuss with their wives . . .

[Second Director of the CIA]

They call it intelligence 1963 (London: Abelard-Schuman)

[Lord] Charles Percy Snow 1905-

6 A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by
the standards of traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who
have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the
illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked
the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermo-
dynamics. The response was cold : it was also negative.

The Two Cultures The Rede Lecture, 1959 (London: Cambridge UP)

7 The scientific revolution is the only method by which most people can gain
the primal things (years of life, freedom from hunger, survival for children)

- — the primal things which we take for granted and which have in reality
come to us through having had our own scientific revolution not so long
ago.

The Two Cultures: A Second Look 1963 (London: Cambridge UP)

8 Scientists have it within them to know what a future directed society feels
like, for science itself, in its human aspect, is just like that.

A Postscript to Science and Government 1 962 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

9 Scientists .... I should say that naturally they had the future in their

140 [Lord] Charles Percy Snow

bones.

The Two Cultures The Rede Lecture. 1959 (London: Cambridge UP)

1 [Of molecular biology] This branch of science is likely to affect the way in
which men think of themselves more profoundly than any scientific advance
since Darwin’s and probably more so than Darwin’s.

The Two Cultures: A Second Look 1963 (London: Cambridge UP)

Frederick Soddy 1877-1956

2 Four circles to the kissing come,

The smaller are the benter.

The bend is just the inverse of
The distance from the centre.

Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There’s now no need for rule of thumb.

Since zero bend’s a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,

The sum of squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.

Nature 1 936 137 1 021

Omond McKillop Solandt 1909-

3 It is presumptuous for scientists to try to formulate national goals, since
science is by no means the only important activity in the nation. But
scientists have a duty to point out that most nations have neither explicit
goals nor a mechanism for formulating them.

Sophocles 495^106 bc

4 One must learn by doing the thing; though you think you know it, you
have no certainty until you try.

Trachiniae 592

Herbert Spencer 1820-1903

5 Definition of life: The continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations.

Principles of Biology section 30

6 Science is organised knowledge.

Education ch 29

Stephen Spender 1909-

7 More beautiful and soft than any moth

With burring furred antennae feeling its huge path
Through dusk, the airliner with shut-off engines
Glides over suburbs and the sleeves set trailing tall
To point the wind. Gently, broadly she falls,

Scarcely disturbing charted currents of air.

The Landscape near an Aerodrome in Collected Poems, 1928—13 (London: Faber & Faber)

141 Gunther Siegmund Stent

Oswald Spengler 1880-1936

1 Nature is the shape in which the man of higher cultures synthesizes and
interprets the immediate impressions of his senses. History is that from
which his imagination seeks comprehension of the living existence of the
world.

The Decline of the Wesf transl C F Atkinson, vol 1, 1926 (London: Allen & Unwin)

Edmund Spenser ca 1552-1599
2 Within this wide great Universe

Nothing doth firme and permanent appeare,
But all things tost and turned by transverse.

Two Cantos of Mutability 1 609

State of Tennessee, USA

3 It shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the universities, normals and
all other public schools of the state which are supported in whole or in part
by the public school funds of the state, to teach any theory that denies the
story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach
instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

1925. Repealed 1967

Gertrude Stein 1874-1946

4 When we were having a book printed in France we complained about the
bad alignment. Ah, they explained, that is because they use machines now,
machines are bound to be inaccurate, they have not the intelligence of
human beings, naturally the human mind corrects the fault of the hand,
but with a machine, of course, there are errors. The reason why all of us
naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods,
machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have
anything to do with the real business of living.

Paris France 1940 (New York: Scribners)

Stendhal [Henri Beyle] 1783-1842

5 Ce quej’appelle cristallisation, c'est operation de V esprit, qui tire de tout ce
qui se presente la decouverte que Vobjet aime a des nouvelles perfections.

I call ‘crystallisation’ that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections
in its beloved at every turn of events.

De /'amour 1 822. ch 1

Gunther Siegmund Stent 1924-

6 It would, of course, be a poor lookout for the advancement of science if
young men started believing what their elders tell them, but perhaps it is
legitimate to remark that young Turks look younger, or more Turkish, . . .
if the conclusions they eventually reach are different from what anyone had
said before.

Nature 1 969 221 320

142 George Stephenson

George Stephenson 1781-1848

1 I will send them the locomotive to be the Great Missionary among them.

Laurence Sterne 1713-1768

2 It is in the nature of a hypothesis when once a man has conceived it, that
it assimilates everything to itself, as proper nourishment, and from the first
moment of your begetting it, it generally grows stronger by everything you
see, hear or understand.

Tristram Shandy 1759-1767

3 Through prolonged close contact and friction with the objects of their
study, the minds of experts finally acquire a pictorial, moth-like, fiddling
perfection.

Wallace Stevens 1879-1955

4 The man bent over his guitar,

A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

143

Sun Tze

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar.

You do not play things as they are’.

The man replied, ‘Things as they are
Are changed upon a blue guitar . . .

The Man with the Blue Guitar in Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (London: Faber & Faber)

Adlai E Stevenson 1900-1965

1 Via ovicipitum dura est.

The way of the egghead is hard.

Attributed

Strabo 1st Century bc

2 The poets were not alone in sponsoring myths. Long before them cities and
lawmakers had found them a useful expedient .... They needed to control
the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without
myths and marvels.

Geography I. 2; 8

Alexander Strange 1818-1876

3 1 . That science is essential to the advancement of civilisation, the develop-
ment of national wealth, and the maintenance of national power.

2. That all science should be cultivated, even branches of science which do
not appear to promise immediately direct advantage.

3. That the State or Government, acting as trustees of the people, should
provide for the cultivation of those departments of science which, by reason
of costliness, either in time or money, or of remoteness of probable profit,
are beyond the reach of private individuals; in order that the community
may not suffer from the effect of insufficiency of isolated effort.

4. That to whatever extent science may be advanced by State agency, that
agency should be systematically constituted and directed.

Conclusions of Devonshire Royal Commission on Scientific Institutions and the Advancement of
Science 1872

Igor Stravinsky 1882-1973

4 The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the
chains that shackle the spirit . . . the arbitrariness of the constraint only
serves to obtain precision of execution.

Poetics of Music (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP)

Johann August Strindberg 1849-1912

5 Then is it reasonable to think that one can see, by looking in a microscope,
what is going on in another planet?

The Father 1 887, Act 1 , scene 5

Sun Tze 5th-6th Century bc

6 Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence;
supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without
fighting.

[Favourite author of Mao Tse-tung and many others]

Sun Tze Ping Fa transl L Giles. 1910 (London: Luzac)

144 Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift 1667-1745

1 If they would, for example, praise the
beauty of a woman, or any other animal,
they describe it by rhombs, circles,
parallelograms, ellipses, and other
geometrical terms . . .

A Voyage to Laputa in Gulliver's Travels

2 In the school of political projectors, I was
but ill entertained, the professors appearing,
in my judgment, wholly out of their senses;
which is a scene that never fails to make
me melancholy. These unhappy people
were proposing schemes for persuading
monarchs to choose favourites upon the
score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue;
of teaching ministers to consult the public
good; of rewarding merit, great abilities,
and eminent services; of instructing
princes to know their true interest, by
placing it on the same foundation with
that of their people; of choosing for
employment persons qualified to exercise
them; with many other wild impossible
chimeras, that never entered before into
the heart of man to conceive, and confirmed in me the old observation,
that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers
have not maintained for truth.

A Voyage to Laputa in Gulliver's Travels

3 ... whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow
upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of
mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race
of politicians put together.

A Voyage to Brobdingnag in Gulliver's Travels

4 [Of the Laputans] They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satel-
lites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from
the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the
outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter
in twenty one and a half ; . . .

[These satellites were first observed by Asaph Hall in 1877. Their periods are 7-7 and 30 hours]

A Voyage to Laputa in Gulliver's Travels

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi 1893-

5 Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought.

The Scientist Speculates ed I G Good, 1962 (London: Heinemann)

6 It is common knowledge that the ultimate source of all our energy and

145 Charles-Maurice De Talleyrand

negative entropy is the radiation of the sun. When a photon interacts with
a material particle on our globe it lifts one electron from an electron pair
to a higher level. This excited state as a rule has but a short lifetime and the
electron drops back within 10 -7 to 10' 8 seconds to the ground state giving
off its excess energy in one way or another. Life has learned to catch the
electron in the excited state, uncouple it from its partner and let it drop
back to the ground state through its biological machinery utilizing its excess
energy for life processes.

Light and Life ed W D McElroy and B Glass, 1961 (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins Press)

1 Knowledge is a sacred cow, and my problem will be how we can milk her
while keeping clear of her horns.

Science 1964 146 1278

2 The real scientist ... is ready to bear privations and, if need be, starvation
rather than let anyone dictate to him which direction his work must take.

Science Needs Freedom 1 943

3 Research means going out into the unknown with the hope of finding
something new to bring home. If you know in advance what you are going
to do, or even to find there, then it is not research at all : then it is only a
kind of honourable occupation.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1 971 , pi

Leo Szilard 1898-1964

4 Don’t lie if you don’t have to.

Science 1972 176 966

Taibai died 1842

5 To a man who has not eaten a globe-fish, we cannot speak of its flavour.

[This is the fugu. parts of which are extremely poisonous]

Hippolyte Taine 1828-1893

6 Le vice et la vertu sont des produits comme le vitriol et le sucre.
Vice and virtue are products like sulphuric acid and sugar.

Histoire de la literature ang/aise 1863, Introduction

Peter Guthrie Tait 1831-1901

7 Perhaps to the student there is no part of elementary mathematics so repul-
sive as is spherical trigonometry.

Encyclopaedia Britannica 1 91 1. 1 1th edn, 22, 721 (article on Quaternions)

Charles-Maurice De Talleyrand 1754-1838

8 Both erudition and agriculture ought to be encouraged by government;
wit and manufactures will come of themselves.

It is sometimes quite enough for a man to feign ignorance of that which he
knows, to gain the reputation of knowing that of which he is ignorant.

146 Vasili N Tatishchev

Vasili N Tatishchev 1686-1750

1 Freedom is not an essential and basic condition for the growth of science;
the care and diligence of government authorities are the most important
conditions for this development.

Razgovor

Alfred [Lord] Tennyson 1809-1892

2 .... Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue ....
Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point
Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

.... Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

[Prophetic — which excuses the ghastly rhyme]

Locksley Hall 1 832

3 Science grows and Beauty dwindles.

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After 1 886

4 A time to sicken and to swoon.

When Science reaches forth her arms

To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon.

In Memoriam AHH XXI. 4

Tertullian ca 155-222

5 Cerium est quia imposibile est.

It is certain because it is. impossible.

De Carrie Cristi 5

Thales of Miletus ca 640-546 bc

6 Water is the principle, or the element, of things
All things are water.

Plutarch Placita Philosophorum i. 3

Stefan Themerson 1910—

7 With a poet it’s different,
if his poem is bad

even his broken heart
will not make it better.

On Semantic Poetry 1 975 (London: Gaberbocchus)

D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson 1860-1948

8 Cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of
matter, and it is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles
have been moved, moulded and conformed. They are no exception to the
rule that God always geometrizes. Their problems of form are in the first

147 William Thomson [Lord Kelvin]

instance mathematical problems, their problems of growth are essentially
physical problems, and the morphologist is, ipso facto, a student of physical
science.

On Growth and Form 1917 (London: Cambridge UP)

1 Form is a diagram of forces.

On Growth and Form 1917 (London: Cambridge UP)

2 It behoves us always to remember that in physics it has taken great men to
discover simple things. They are very great names indeed which we couple
with the explanation of the path of a stone, the droop of a chain, the tints
of a bubble, the shadows in a cup.

On Growth and Form 1917 (London: Cambridge UP)

Francis Thompson 1859-1907

3 All things by immortal power.

Near and far

Hiddenly

To each other linked are,

That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.

The Mistress of Vision

James Thomson 1700-1748

4 Even now the setting sun and shifting clouds,

Seen, Greenwich, from thy lovely heights, declare
How just, how beauteous the refractive law.

To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton 1 727

5 [Newton] from motion’s simple laws
Could trace the secret hand of Providence,

Wide-working through this universal frame.

To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton 1 727

[Sir] Joseph John Thomson 1856-1940

6 This example illustrates the differences in the effects which may be produced
by research in pure or applied science. A research on the lines of applied
science would doubtless have led to improvement and development of the
older methods— the research in pure science has given us an entirely new
and much more powerful method. In fact, research in applied science leads
to reforms, research in pure science leads to revolutions, and revolutions,
whether political or industrial, are exceedingly profitable things if you are
on the winning side.

in Lord Rayleigh J J Thomson 1943 (London: Cambridge UP)

William Thomson [Lord Kelvin] 1824-1907

7 Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to
common sense. It is merely the etherialization of common sense.

in S P Thompson Life of Lord Kelvin 1910

148 William Thomson [ Lord Kelvin]

1 Fourier is a mathematical poem.

W Thompson and P G Tait Treatise on Natural Philosophy vol i. pp713, 718. Quoted by F Engels
in The Dialectics of Nature

2 lam never content until I have constructed a mechanical model of the
subject I am studying. If I succeed in making one, I understand ; otherwise
I do not.

Notes of Lectures on Molecular Dynamics and the Wave Theory of Light

3 I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and
express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot
measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a
meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

Lecture to the Institution of Civil Engineers, 3 May 1883

Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862

4 It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both
man and nature.

Walden

5 Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. I say, let your affairs be as two or three,
and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen,
and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

Walden. See Scientific American August 1969

James Thurber 1894-1961

6 Progress was all right ; it only went on too long.

Attributed

Kliment Arkadievich Timiryazev 1843-1920

7 I set myself two parallel tasks : to create for science and write for the
people.

Science and Democracy 1927 (Leningrad: Priboi)

[Sir] Henry Tizard 1885-1959

8 Andrade [who was looking after wartime inventions] is like an inverted
Micawber, waiting for something to turn down.

in C P Snow A Postscript to Science and Government 1 962 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

9 The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of
problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the
scientific world.

in C P Snow A Postscript to Science and Government 1962 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

[Count] Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi 1828-1910

10 lam convinced that the history of so-called scientific work in our famous
centuries of European civilisation will, in a couple of hundred years, repre-
sent an inexhaustible source of laughter and sorrow for future generations.
The learned men of the small western part of our European continent

149 Arnold Toynbee

lived for several centuries under the illusion that the eternal blessed life
was the West’s future. They were interested in the problem of when and
where this blessed life would come. But they never thought of how they
were going to make their life better.

1 884. Probably in What is Religion ?

1 Our body is a machine for living.

Napoleon in War and Peace transl L and A Maude. Book X, 1922 (Oxford: Oxford UP) ch 29

2 A modern branch of mathematics, having achieved the art of dealing with
the infinitely small, can now yield solutions in other more complex prob-
lems of motion, which used to appear insoluble.

This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when
dealing with problems of motion, admits the conception of the infinitely
small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute conti-
nuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human mind
cannot avoid when dealing with separate elements of motion instead of
examining continuous motion.

In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens.
The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable human
wills, is continuous.

To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of
history ....

Only by taking an infinitesimally small unit for observation (the differen-
tial of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to
the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals)
can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.

War and Peace transl L and A Maude, Book XI. 1 922 (Oxford: Oxford UP) ch 1

3 The generals, the institution can select a strategy, lay it all out, but what
happens on the battlefield is quite different.

4 [Of science] It gives us no answer to our question, what shall we do and
how shall we live?

What is Art ? 1 898

Rudolf Tomaschek 1 895—

5 Modern physics is an instrument of Jewry for the destruction of Nordic
science . . . True physics is the creation of the German spirit.

in W L Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (London: Seeker & Warburg) ch 8

Stephen Toulmin 1922-

6 No doubt, a scientist isn’t necessarily penalized for being a complex,
versatile, eccentric individual with lots of extra-scientific interests. But it
certainly doesn’t help him a bit.

Civilization and Science in Conflict or Collaboration 1972 (Amsterdam: Elsevier)

Arnold Toynbee 1889-1975

7 [We are in] the first age since the dawn of civilisation in which people

150 Arnold Toynbee

have dared to think it practicable to make the benefits of civilisation
available to the whole human race.

Thomas Traherne ca 1637-1674

1 He that knows the secrets of nature with Albertus Magnus, or the motions
of the heavens with Galileo, or the cosmography of the moon with
Hevelius, or the body of man with Galen, or the nature of diseases with
Hippocrates, or the harmonies in melody with Orpheus, or of poetry with
Homer, or of grammar with Lily, or of whatever else with the greatest
artist; he is nothing if he knows them merely for talk or idle speculation,
or transient and external use. But he that knows them for value, and knows
them his own, shall profit infinitely.

Centuries of Meditation 1 908, no. 341

Lev Davidovich [Bronstein] Trotskii 1879-1940

2 The phenomena of radio-activity lead us straight to the problem of
releasing the inner energy of the atom .... The greatest task of contem-
porary physics is to extract from the atom its latent energy — to tear open a
plug so that energy should well up with all its might. Then it will become
possible to replace coal and petrol by atomic energy which will become our
basic fuel and motive power. This is by no means a hopeless task, and what
vistas its solution will open up . . . scientific and technological thought is
approaching the point of a great upheaval; and so the social revolution of
our time coincides with a revolution in man’s inquiry into the nature of
matter and in his mastery of matter.

Speech 1 March 1926. Sochineniya XXI

3 From the field of chemistry there is no direct and immediate exit to social
perspectives .... An objective method of social cognition is necessary.
Marxism is that method. When any marxist tried to convert Marx’s theory
into a universal skeleton key and flitted through other fields of knowledge,
Vladimir Il’ich would rebuke him with the expressive little phrase,
‘Communist conceit’. This would signify in particular: Communism does
not replace chemistry. But the converse is also true. The attempt to step
across Marxism, on the pretext that chemistry (or natural science in
general) must solve all problems, is a peculiar chemical conceit, which is
theoretically no less erroneous and practically no more likeable than
Communist conceit.

D / Mendeleev i Marksizm in Sochineniya XXI

Harry S Truman 1884-1972

4 Oppenheimer allant dans le bureau de Truman avec Dean Acheson disait a
ce dernier en se tordant les mains 'J’ai du sang sur les mains’ et que plutard
Truman dit a Acheson: ‘ne me ramenez plus jamais ce f . . cretin. C’ n’est
pas lui qui a lance la bombe. C’est moi. Cette sorte de pleurnicherie me rend
malade. ’

[The initial 'S' in Harry S Truman does not stand for anything]
in Jean-Jacques Salomon Science et Politique 1970 (Paris: Editions du Seuil)

151

United States Air Force

Ivan Sergeievich Turgenev 1818-1883

1 Nature is not a temple but a workshop in which man is the labourer.

2 Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces
itself to this : ‘Great God, grant that twice two be not four’.

Prayer

Turkish Proverb

3 If Allah gives you prosperity, He will give you the brains to go with it.

Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] 1835-1910

4 What a good thing Adam had — when he said a thing he knew nobody had
said it before.

5 When I was a boy of 14 my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to
have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at
how much he had learnt in 7 years.

6 Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory;
then you can borrow money of them.

The Bee in What is Man and Other Essays

Henry Twells 1823-1900

7 When as a child I laughed and wept,

Time crept.

When as a youth I waxed more bold.

Time strolled.

When I became a full-grown man,

Time ran.

When older still I daily grew.

Time FLEW.

Soon I shall find, in passing on,

Time gone.

O Christ! wilt Thou haved saved me then?

Amen.

[Poem fixed to the front of the clock-case in the North Transept of Chester Cathedral]
Time's Paces in Newsletter of the Friends of Chester Cathedra! Christmas 1972

United States Air Force

8 [The United States Air Force ROTC Manual Fundamentals of Aerospace
Weapons Systems defines a MILITARY TARGET as] Any person, thing,
idea, entity or location selected for destruction, inactivation, or rendering
non-usable with weapons which will reduce or destroy the will or ability of
the enemy to resist.

[Rapoport draws attention to the mentality which attacks ideas with bombs]

in K Von Clausewitz On War ed A Rapoport. 1967 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

152 US President's Science Advisory Committee

US President’s Science Advisory Committee

1 In science the excellent is not just better than the ordinary; it is almost all
that matters. It is therefore fundamental that this country should energeti-
cally sustain and strongly reinforce first-rate work where it now exists.

Scientific Progress, the Universities and the Federal Government The White House. Washington.
DC, 15 November 1960

Miguel de Unamuno 1864-1937
2 Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.

The Tragic Sense of Life transl P Smith. 1953 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

John Updike 1932—

3 Neutrinos, they are very small.

They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.

The earth is just a silly ball

To them, through which they simply pass,

Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.

They snub the most exquisite gas,

Ignore the most substantial wall,

Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass,

Insult the stallion in his stall,

And, scorning barriers of class,

Infiltrate you and me. Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed — you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.

Cosmic Gall in Telegraph Poles and Other Poems (London: Deutschj

James Ussher [Archbishop of Armagh] 1581-1656

4 The world was created on 22nd October, 4004 bc at 6 o’clock in the even-
ing.

Chrono/ogia Sacra Oxford, 1 660, p45. Annals of the World Oxford. 1 658

Paul Valery 1871-1945

5 ‘Science’ means simply the aggregate of the recipes that are always success-
ful. All the rest is literature.

Analects vol 14 of Collected Works ed J Matthews. 1970 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

6 Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.

7 If a man’s imagination is stimulated by artificial and arbitrary rules, he is a
poet ; if it is stifled by such limitations, whatever kind of writer he may be, a
poet he is not.

153 Paul Verlaine

1 L 'histoire est la science des choses qui ne se repetent pas.

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

Variiti IV

2 Man is only man at the surface. Remove his skin, dissect, and immediately
you come to the machinery.

3 One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone
sees that it doesn’t fall.

Analects vol 14 of Collected Works ed J Matthews. 1970 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

4 There is a science of simple things, an art of complicated ones. Science is
feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their
combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition
of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas;
the interest of science lies in the art of making science.

Analects vol 14 of Collected Works ed J Matthews, 1970 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

Giorgio Vasari 1511-1574

5 He might have been a scientist if he had not been so versatile.

[Of Leonardo da Vinci]

Lives of the Artists

The Vatican Council

6 If any one shall not be ashamed to assert that, except for matter, nothing
exists; let him be anathema.

Session 3, Canon 2, 24 April 1870

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov 1887-1943

7 We shall go to the pyre, we shall burn, but we shall not renounce our
convictions.

[The geneticist arrested 6 August 1940; sentenced to death 9 July 1941 ; elected Foreign
Member of the Royal Society 1 942; died 26 January 1 943]

in Zh A Medvedev The Rise and Fall of T D Lysenko 1969 (New York: Columbia UP)

Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov 1891-1951

8 How have the thematics of scientific research at different times and places
been determined and how are they determined? It is only today that we
have begun to study this most important problem of the history of science
and it is only the Marxists who are doing it.

Marxism and Modern Thought 1935 (London: Routledge)

Thorstein Veblen 1857-1929

9 The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions
grow where only one grew before.

The Place of Science in Modern Civilization and Other Essays 1 91 9 (New York: Viking Press)

Paul Verlaine 1844-1896

10 Brothers touch not gluttonous science

154

Paul Verlaine

That off the forbidden vines seeks to steal
The bloody fruit we must not know.

in Jacques Monod Inaugural Lecture 1967 (San Diego. Calif: The Salk Institute)

Jules Verne 1828-1905

1 As for the Yankees, they have no other ambition than to take possession
of this new continent of the sky, and to plant upon the summit of its high-
est elevation the star-spangled banner of the United States.

Madame Marie Vichy-Deffand [Marquise du Deffand] 1697-1780

2 II n’y a que le premier pas qui coute.

It is only the first step which takes the effort.

[Referring to the legend of Saint Denis who walked from his place of execution carrying his head]
Lettre b d'Alembert 1763

[Sir] Geoffrey Vickers 1894-

. . . the historical causes which produced the Western individual and turned
him into the Western individualist. I will not elaborate them here. I would
only insist that we should not mistake for laws of God or nature the cul-
tural values of the world’s most unstable systems.

Freedom in a Rocking Boat 1970 (London: Penguin)

Rudolf Virchow 1821-1902

4 In my journal, anyone can make a fool of himself.

Archiv fur pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie)

5 Pathology is the science of disease [in all organisms] from cells to societies.

Archiv fur pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie Introduction

Virgil [Virgilius Maro] 70-19 bc

6 Exudent alii spirantia mollius aera

Credo equidem vivos ducent de marmore vultus
Orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus
Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent.

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento,

Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.

Others, I know it well, breathing bronze shall trace
And from the deathlike marble call up the living face:

Shall plead with eloquence not thine, shall map and rule the skies,

And with the voice of science shall tell when stars shall set and rise.

’Tis thine O Rome to rule: this mission ne’er forgo

Thine arts, thy science this, to dictate to the foe

To spare who yields submission and bring the haughty low.

Aeneid VI, 85

7 Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

Happy is he who gets to know the reasons for things.

[Motto of Churchill College, Cambridge — local translation: It's great to know what makes things
tick]

Georgies II, 490

155 Conrad Hal Waddington

Voltaire [Francois Marie Arouet] 1694-1778

1 Vous avez confirme dans ces lieux pleins d’ennui
Ce que Newton connut sans sortir de chez lui.

You have confirmed in these tedious places
What Newton found out without leaving his room.

[On the expedition of Maupertuis to Peru to confirm the flattening of the Earth at the poles]

2 [Invited a second time to an orgy] ‘Ah no, my good friends, once a
philosopher, twice a pervert’.

3 There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics
.... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes
than in that of Homer.

A Philosophical Dictionary 1 881 , 3, 40

4 'Travail Ions sans raisonner, ’ dit Martin; ‘c’est le seul moyen de rendre la vie
supportable. ’

‘Let us work without theorising,’ said Martin; ”tis the only way to make
life endurable.’

Candide 1758, XXX. Transl John Butt. 1947 (London: Penguin Classics)

5 Cunegonde . . . vit entre les broussailles le docteur-Pangloss qui donnait une
legon de physique experimentale a la femme de chambre de sa mere, petite
brune tres jolie et tres docile.

One day Cunegonde was walking near the house in a little coppice, called
‘the park’, when she saw Dr Pangloss behind some bushes giving a lesson
in experimental philosophy to her mother’s waiting woman, a pretty little
brunette who seemed eminently teachable.

Candide 1758. I. Transl John Butt, 1947 (London: Penguin Classics)

[Field-Marshal] Helmuth Carl Bernard Von Moltke 1800-1891

6 No plan survives contact with the enemy.

Alexander Vucinich 1914—

7 Every scientist is an agent of cultural change. He may not be a champion
of change; he may even resist it, as scholars of the past resisted the new
truths of historical geology, biological evolution, unitary chemistry, and
non-Euclidean geometry. But to the extent that he is a true professional,
the scientist is inescapably an agent of change. His tools are the instruments
of change— skepticism, the challenge to established authority, criticism,
rationality, and individuality.

Science in Russian Culture: A History to I860 1 963 (Stanford. Calif: Stanford UP)

Conrad Hal Waddington 1905-1975

8 Science is the organised attempt of mankind to discover how things work
as causal systems. The scientific attitude of mind is an interest in such
questions. It can be contrasted with other attitudes, which have different

1 56 Conrad Hal Waddington

interests; for instance the magical, which attempts to make things work not
as material systems but as immaterial forces which can be controlled by
spells; or the religious, which is interested in the world as revealing the
nature of God.

The Scientific Attitude 1941 (London: Penguin)

George Wald 1906-

1 We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

in The Origin of Optical Activity from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1 957 69
352-68

Alfred Russell Wallace 1823-1913

2 In proportion as physical characteristics become of less importance, mental
and moral qualities will have an increasing importance to the well-being of
the race. Capacity for acting in concert, for protection of food and shelter;
sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist each other; the sense of right,
which checks depredation upon our fellows ... all qualities that from
earliest appearance must have been for the benefit of each community, and
would therefore have become objects of natural selection.

Origin of human races and the antiquity of man in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society.
London 1 864, clviii

3 These checks — war, disease, famine and the like — must, it occurred to me,
act on animals as well as man. Then I thought of the enormously rapid
multiplication of animals, causing these checks to be much more effective
in them than in the case of man; and while pondering vaguely on this fact
there suddenly flashed upon me the idea of the survival of the fittest— that
the individuals removed by these checks must be on the whole inferior to
those that survived. In the two hours that elapsed before my ague fit was
over, I had thought out almost the whole of the theory : and the same
evening I sketched the draft of my paper, and in the two succeeding even-
ings wrote it out in full, and sent it by the next post to Mr. Darwin.

in B Willey Darwin and Butler 1960 (London: Chatto & Windus)

Graham Wallas 1858-1932

4 ... ‘How can I know what I think till I see what I say?’

The Art of Thought ed May Wallas, 1 945 (London: Watts)

Robert Penn Warren 1905-

5 .... What if angry vectors veer

Round your sleeping head, and form.

There’s never need to fear

Violence of the poor world’s abstract storm.

Lullaby in Encounter May 1957

James Watt 1736-1819

6 James Watt, Who, directing the force of an original genius. Early exercised
in philosophic research to the improvement of THE STEAM ENGINE,
enlarged the resources of his country, increased the power of men, and rose

157 Carl Friedrich von Weissacker

to an eminent place among the most illustrious followers of science and
the real benefactors of the world.

Epitaph in Westminster Abbey, London

Warren Weaver 1894-

1 The century of biology upon which we are now well embarked is no matter
of trivialities. It is a movement of really heroic dimensions, one of the great
episodes in man s intellectual history. The scientists who are carrying the
movement forward talk in terms of nucleo-proteins, of ultracentrifuges, of
biochemical genetics, of electrophoresis, of the electron microscope, of
molecular morphology, of radioactive isotopes. But do not be fooled into
thinking this is mere gadgetry. This is the dependable way to seek a
solution of the cancer and polio problems, the problem of rheumatism and
of the heart. This is the knowledge on which we must base our solution of
the population and food problems. This is the understanding of life.

Letter toHMH Carson in The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation 1952

Simone Weil 1909-1943

La science, aujourd’hui, cherchera une source d’inspiration audessus d’elle ou
perira.

La science ne presente que trois inter ets: 1. les applications techniques;

2. jeu d echecs ; 3. chemin vers Dieu. (Le jeu d'echecs est agremente de
concours, prix et medailles.)

Science today must search for a source of inspiration higher than itself or it
must perish.

Science offers only three points of interest: 1. technical applications;

2. as a game of chess; 3. as a way to God. (The chess-game is embellished
with competitions, prizes and medals.)

La Pesanteur et la Grace 1 967 (Paris: Librairie Plon)

Alvin M Weinberg 191 5—

3 I would therefore sharpen the criterion of scientific merit by proposing
that, other things being equal, that field has the most merit which contri-
butes most heavily to, and illuminates most brightly, its neighbouring
scientific disciplines.

Minerva 1 963 2 1 59-1 71

Paul Alfred Weiss 1 898-

4 A system ... is exactly the opposite of a machine, in which the structure
of the product depends crucially on strictly predefined operations of the
parts. In the system, the structure of the whole determines the operation of
the parts; in the machine, the operation of the parts determines the out-
come.

Beyond Reductionism ed A Koestler and V R Smithies. 1968 (London: Hutchinson)

Carl Friedrich von Weissacker 1912-

5 Those reductionists who try to reduce life to physics usually try to reduce
it to primitive physics not to good physics. Good physics is broad enough
to contain life, to encompass life in its description since good physics allows

1 58 Carl Friedrich von Weissacker

a vast field of possible descriptions. There is no reason why living beings
should be compared to primitive machines which don’t make use of feed-
back.

Theoria to Theory 1 968, vol 3

Victor Frederick Weisskopf 1908-

1 Science has become adult ; I am not sure whether scientists have.

Scientists in Search of their Conscience ed A R Michaelis and H Harvey

2 The value of fundamental research does not lie only in the ideas it pro-
duces. There is more to it. It affects the whole intellectual life of a nation
by determining its way of thinking and the standards by which actions and
intellectual production are judged. If science is highly regarded and if the
importance of being concerned with the most up-to-date problems of
fundamental research is recognized, then a spiritual climate is created which
influences the other activities. An atmosphere of creativity is established
which penetrates every cultural frontier. Applied sciences and technology
are forced to adjust themselves to the highest intellectual standards which
are developed in the basic sciences. This influence works in many ways:
some fundamental students go into industry ; the techniques which are
applied to meet the stringent requirements of fundamental research serve to
create new technological methods. The style, the scale, and the level of
scientific and technical work are determined in pure research; that is what
attracts productive people and what brings scientists to those countries
where science is at the highest level. Fundamental research sets the stan-
dards of modern scientific thought ; it creates the intellectual climate in

159 Rebecca West

which our modern civilization flourishes. It pumps the lifeblood of idea
and inventiveness not only into the technological laboratories and factories,
but into every cultural activity of our time. The case for generous support
for pure and fundamental science is as simple as that.

Why pure science ? in the Bulletin or the Atomic Scientists 1 965 21 4-8

Chaim Weizmann 1874-1952

1 [To Meyer Weisgal, Director of the Weizmann Institute] Never let the
scientists get near the Shissel [container, where the money is kept].

in Joseph Wechsberg A Walk through the Garden of Science 1967 (London- Weidenfeld &
Nicolson)

Arthur Mellen Wellington 1847-1895

2 Engineering ... is the art of doing that well with one dollar, which any
bungler can do with two after a fashion.

The Economic Theory of the Location of Railways 6th edn. 1900 (New York: Wiley)

Herbert George Wells 1866-1946

3 ... my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be : ‘I
told you so. You damned fools.’ (The italics are mine.)

Preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air originally written in 1907

4 I must confess that I believe quite firmly that an inductive knowledge of a
great number of things in the future is becoming a human possibility. So
far nothing has been attempted, so far no first-class mind has ever focused
itself upon these issues. But suppose the laws of social and political develop-
ment, for example, were given as many brains, were given as much attention,
criticism and discussion as we have given to the laws of chemical compo-
sition during the last fifty years— what might we not expect?

The Discovery of the Future Lecture at the Royal Institution, 1 902

In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty
years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought
to be done and a serious attempt to do it.

The Work. Wealth and Happiness of Mankind 1 934 (London: Heinemann) ch 2

6 Queen Victoria was like a great paper-weight that for half a century sat
upon men’s minds, and when she was removed their ideas began to blow
about all over the place haphazardly.

The Time Traveller 1973 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

7 There comes a moment in the day, when you have written your pages in
the morning, attended to your correspondence in the afternoon, and have
nothing further to do. Then comes that hour when you are bored ; that’s
the time for sex.

in N and J Mackenzie H G Wells 1973 (New York: Simon & Schuster)

Rebecca West 1892-

8 Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but
after a war it seems more like astrology.

160 Hermann Weyl

Hermann Weyl 1885-1955

1 The whole is always more, is capable of a much greater variety of wave
states, than the combination of its parts .... In this very radical sense,
quantum physics supports the doctrine that the whole is more than the
combination of its parts.

Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science 1949 (Princeton. NJ: Princeton UP)

John Archibald Wheeler 191 1—

2 There is nothing in the world except empty curved space. Matter, charge,
electromagnetism and other fields are only manifestations of the curvature
of space.

1 957. In New Scientist 26 September 1 974

3 Time is defined so that motion looks simple.

Gravitation 1973 (Reading: Freeman)

William Whewell 1794-1866

4 As we read the Principia [of Newton] we feel as when we are in an ancient
armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size ; and as we look at them
we marvel what manner of man was he who could use as a weapon what
we can scarcely lift as a burden.

in E N da C Andrade Newton and the Science of his Age. Proceedings of the Royal Society
6 May 1943

5 We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general.

I should incline to call him a scientist.

[The first use of the word]

The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences 1 840

James Abbott McNeil Whistler 1834-1903

6 [Answering Oscar Wilde’s ‘I wish I had said that’] You will, Oscar, you wi

in L C Ingleby Oscar Wilde

161 Walt Whitman

Alfred North Whitehead 1861-1947

1 The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and
the eternal in the transitory.

2 A crystal lacks rhythm from excess of pattern, while a fog is unrhythmic
in that it exhibits a patternless confusion of detail.

3 It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by
eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the
case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important
operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

4 It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author
writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

Art Introduction to Mathematics 1948 (Oxford: Oxford UP)

5 The possibilities of modern technology were first in practice realised in
England by the energy of a prosperous middle class. Accordingly, the
industrial revolution started there. But the Germans explicitly realised the
methods by which the deeper veins in the mine of science could be reached.
In their technological schools and universities progress did not have to
wait for the occasional genius or the occasional lucky thought. Their feats
of scholarship during the nineteenth century were the admiration of the
world. This discipline of knowledge applies beyond technology to pure
science, and beyond science to general scholarship. It represents the change
from amateurs to professionals.

Science and the Modern World 1926 (London: Cambridge UP)

6 Science is taking on a new aspect which is neither purely physical nor
purely biological. It is becoming the study of organisms. Biology is the
study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller
organisms.

Science and the Modern World 1926 (London: Cambridge UP)

Walt Whitman ca 1819-1892

7 Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I
contain multitudes).

Song of Myself 1938 (London: Nonesuch Press) 5

8 I need no assurances . . .

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years.

I do not doubt that interiors have their interiors and exteriors have their
exteriors . . .

Assurances in Nonesuch Edition of Collected Poems 1 938 (London: Nonesuch Press)

9 When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

162 Walt Whitman

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure
them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause
in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

[1865-1867]

When / heard the team'd astronomer in Nonesuch Edition of Collected Poems 1938 (London:
Nonesuch Press)

Benjamin Lee Whorf 1897-1934

1 ... an explicit scientific world view may arise by a higher specialization of

the same basic grammatical patterns that fathered the naive and implicit
view. Thus the world view of modern science arises by higher specialization
of the basic.

Language, Thought and Reality 1956 (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press)

Norbert Wiener 1894-1964

2 A painter like Picasso, who runs through many periods and phases, ends
up by saying all those things which are on the tips of the tongues of the
age to say, and finally sterilises the originality of his contemporaries and
juniors.

The Human Use of Human Beings 1950 (London: Sphere Books)

3 We are raising a generation of young men who will not look at any
scientific project which does not have millions of dollars invested in it ... .
We are for the first time finding a scientific career well paid and attractive
to a large number of our best young go-getters. The trouble is that
scientific work of the first quality is seldom done by the go-getters, and that
the dilution of the intellectual milieu makes it progressively harder for the
individual worker with any ideas to get a hearing .... The degradation of
the position of the scientist as an independent worker and thinker to that of
a morally irresponsible stooge in a science-factory has proceeded even
more rapidly and devastatingly than I had expected.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 4 November 1948, pp338-9

Jerome Bert Wiesner 1915-

4 Some problems are just too complicated for rational logical solutions. They
admit of insights, not answers.

in D Lang Profiles: A Scientist's Advice II. New Yorker 26 January 1 963

Eugene Paul Wigner 1902-

5 The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the
languages we use for their expression.

Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 1959 13 1

Oscar Wilde 1854-1900

6 Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Lady Windermere's Fan

163

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1 Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of
dead religions.

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young 1 891

Helmuth Wilhelm 1905-

2 Change, that is the only thing in the Universe which is Unchanging.

[Epitomizing the I Ching, 8th Century BC]

Der Zeitbegriff im Buch der Wandlungen in Eranos Jahrbuch 1 951 20 321

William Henry [Duke of Gloucester] 1743-1805

3 Another damned, thick, square book. Always scribble, scribble, scribble.
Eh: Mr Gibbon?

Quoted in a Note to Boswell's Life of Johnson

William of Occam 1300-1349

4 [Occam’s Razor] Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.

Attributed

[Lord] John [of Selmeston] Wilmot 1895-1964

5 What I like about scientists is that they are a team, so that one need not
know their names.

[Minister of Supply 1 945-1 947]

The Prof in two Worlds 1961 (London: Collins)

[Sir] Harold Wilson 1916—

6 If there was one word I could use to identify modern socialism it was
‘science’.

[But the 'white-hot technological revolution’ never took place and, like Christianity, science was
never really tried]

The Relevance of British Socialism 1964 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Wallace Wilson 20th Century

7 He prayeth best who loveth best
All creatures great and small.

The Streptococcus is the test

I love him least of all.

[In parody of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner ]

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951

8 In order to draw a limit to thinking, we should have to think both sides of
this limit.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 1961 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

9 We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of
physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 1961 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

10 We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the prob-
lems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no

164 Ludwig Wittgenstein

question left, and just this is the answer. The solution of the problem of
life is seen in the vanishing of this problem.

Tractatus Logico-Phi/osophicus 1961 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

1 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Tractatus Logico-Phi/osophicus 1961 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul)

Friedrich Woehler 1800-1882

2 Organic chemistry just now is enough to drive one mad. It gives one the
impression of a primeval, tropical forest full of the most remarkable things,
a monstrous and boundless thicket, with no way of escape, into which one
may well dread to enter.

Letter to Berzelius 28 January 1885

[Cardinal] Thomas Wolsey ca 1475-1530

3 This new invention of printing has produced various effects of which Your
Holiness cannot be ignorant. If it has restored books and learning, it has
also been the occasion of those sects and schisms which daily appear. Men
begin to call in question the present faith and tenets of the Church; the
laity read the scriptures and pray in their vulgar tongue. Were this suffered
the common people might come to believe that there was not so much use
of the clergy. If men were persuaded that they could make their own way
to God, and in their ordinary language as well as Latin, the authority of
the Mass would fall, which would be prejudicious to our ecclesiastical
orders. The mysteries of religion must be kept in the hands of the priests.

Frederic Wood- Jones 1879-1954

4 Whoever wins to a great scientific truth will find a poet before him in the
quest.

Medical Journal of Australia 29 August 1931

[Sir] Richard van der Riet Woolley 1906-

5 Space-travel is utter bilge.

[The Astronomer- Royal. 1956-1971. Quoted ca 1956]

in Arthur C Clarke Profiles of the Future 1973 (London: Gollancz)

Elizabeth Wordsworth 1840-1932

6 If all the good people were clever;

And all clever people were good,

The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could.

Good and Clever

William Wordsworth 1770-1850

7 .... Where the statue stood

Of Newton with his prism and silent face,

The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

[Newton's Statue at Trinity College. Cambridge]

The Prelude 1850, Book III, written 1779-1805

165 Yang H siung

1 Lost in a gloom of uninspired research.

The Excursion Book 4

2 Man now presides

In power, where once he trembled in his weakness;

Science advances with gigantic strides ;

But are we aught enriched in love and meekness?

To the Planet Venus 1838

3 Physician art thou — one, all eyes.

Philosopher — a fingering slave,

One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother’s grave.

A Poet's Epitaph

4 Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned
expression which is in the countenance of all Science . . . shall be ready to
put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine
spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced
as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.

5 To the solid ground of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye.

Quotation appearing on the title page of Nature until 1 963

6 Yet we may not entirely overlook

The pleasure gathered from the rudiments
Of geometric science . . .

The Prelude 1 850, Book VI, lines 1 1 5-7

John Wycliffe ca 1320-1384

7 God forceth not a man to believe that which he cannot understand.

(Translator of the Bible into English)

Xenophon ca 444-ca 354 bc

8 What are called the mechahical arts carry a social stigma and are rightly
dishonoured in our cities. For these arts damage the bodies of those who
work at them or who act as overseers, by compelling them to a sedentary
life and, in come cases, to spend the whole day by the fire. This physical
degeneration results also in deterioration of the soul. Furthermore, the
workers in these trades simply have not got the time to perform the offices
of friendship or citizenship. Consequently they are looked on as bad friends
and bad patriots, and in some cities, especially the warlike ones, it is not
legal for a citizen to ply a mechanical trade.

Oeconomicus

Yang Hsiung 51 bc-ad 18

9 Someone asked whether a sage could make divination. [Yang Hsiung]

166 Yang Hsiung

replied that a sage could certainly make divination about Heaven and
Earth. If that is so, continued the questioner, what is the difference between
the sage and the astrologer ( shih)l [Yang Hsiung] replied, ‘The astrologer
foretells what the effects of heavenly phenomena will be on man ; the sage
foretells what the effects of man’s actions will be on the heavens’.

Fa Yen (Model Discourses) ca 5 AD. Transl J Needham Science and Civilization in China 1956
(London: Cambridge UP)

William Butler Yeats 1865-1939

1 The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work.

The Choice in The Collected Poems of W B Yeats 1933 (London: Macmillan)

2 Locke sank into a swoon ;

The Garden died ;

God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.

Fragments in The Collected Poems of W B Yeats 1 933 (London: Macmillan)

3 Science is the religion of the suburbs.

The Spectator 5 July 1 969

Robert M Yerkes 1876-1956

4 One chimpanzee is not a chimpanzee at all.

Chimpanzees, a Laboratory Colony 1945 (New Haven, Conn: Yale UP)

Edward Young 1683-1765

5 Love finds admission, where proud science fails.

Night Thoughts 1 742-1 745

6 This gorgeous apparatus
This display

This ostentation of creative power
This theatre

What eye can take it in . . .?

The Complaint, or Night Thoughts, Night Ninth 1 744

Yuan Mei 1716-1797

7 When the lists go up much is heard of the candidates’ resentment; No one
realizes with what sadness the examiners did their duty.

Sir Douglas Logan in the University of London Bulletin. See also Yuan Mei 1956 (London:

Allen & Unwin)

Yevgeni Ivanovich Zamyatin 1884-1937

8 Tell me, what is the final integer, the one at the very top, the biggest of all?
But that’s ridiculous! Since the number of integers is infinite, how can you
have a final integer?

Well then how can you have a final revolution?

167 Yevgeni Ivanovich Zamyatin

There is no final revolution. Revolutions are infinite.

We transl W N Vickery in P Blake and M Hayward Dissonant Voices in Soviet Literature 1962
(New York: Random House)

Index

A to Z 32:2

Abolition of private property 59:7

Abstraction 53:2

Academy 28:1

Achilles 27:2

Act of creation 66:5

Adam 29:7, 151:4

Addition 31:1

Administered: best a. 122:6
Adult: to be a. 129:2
Advancement of civilisation 143:3
Aeroplane 132:1

Against comes before the for 118:6
Age of one world 84:1
Agenda: time spent on any item of the
a. 116:5

Agriculture 126:2
Aims of scientific thought 161:1
Air pump : reason to tremble at an a. p.
125:3

Airliner 140:7
Alchemy 115:6
Algebra 28:8
Alice 31:1, 31:3
Allah 89:2, 151:3
Alpha-minuses 60:6
Amphibian 27:1
Analytical Engine 97:1
Anathema 153:6
Ancient Egypt 130:4
Andrade 148:8
Angel 10:1

Animal : definition of an a. 46:2
Animals: a. studied by Americans . . .

a. studied by Germans 130:2
Ape: miserable a. for a grandfather 79:5
Apollo the Physician 73:8
Apparatus: the mental a. 59:8
this gorgeous a. 166:6
Appearances: save the a. 23:8
Apple 29:7

Arbitrariness of the constraint 143 :4
Archery 90:3
Archimedes 98:4, 155:3
death of A. 120:8
Architect: the great A. 106:9
Architecture: reason for a. 124:2

Argument 82:4
Aristotle 130:3
Arithmetic 120:2
study of a. 22:9

Armies: most formidable a. 118:3
Art 7:7

a. and religion 67:6
a. and science 21:6
a. is photosynthesis 89:7
a. . . . never ... for its own sake 137:4
a. of inventing arts 98:3
a. of man 74:2
a. upsets 23 :9
so vast is a. 123:2
Artists : great and ingenious a. 49:5
Asia: awakening of A. 28:7
Astrolabe 33:5
Man is God’s a. 80:7
treatise of the a. 80:7
Astrologer . . . sage 165:9
Astrologers 122:5
Astrology 13:6

Astronomer: the leam’d a. 161:9
Astronomers 3:1
Astronomy 120:5
Asymmetry: ordered a. 82:9
Atheist 137:6
Athenians 20:4
Atlantic or a Niagara 49:1
Atmosphere: a. of creativity 158:2
a. of time 17:1

Atom: breaking down of the a. 131:7
energy of the a. 150:2
lightest a. 92:2
the a. is a pattern 77:9
Atomic: the a. bomb is a paper tiger
101:4

Atomies: as easy to count a. 134:7
Atoms 29:3

a. and empty space 44:4
a. ... in ceaseless motion 70:3
a. . . . key hypothesis 57:3
a. of Democritus 21:4
blind a. 24:6

supplanted both demons and gods by
a. 104:4

Attitude: scientific a. 155:8

1 70 Index

Author: mathematical or philosophical

a. 161:4

Authorities: function of public a. 121:6
Authority of a thousand 62:1
Authors: catalogue of a. 32:2
first a. of experiments 113:3
Automata 74:2
Avarice 37:1
Average 2:4
Avogadro 16:2

Baboon : brainy b. 50:4

Bankers . . . research . . . dangerous 86:8

Baseball 3:5

Bassoon 50:4

Bastards: royal b. 55:6

Beauty: b. in one’s equations 47:3

b. is the first test 70:6
overpowering b. 109:7

Bee-hive 10:6

Bees: B., Ants and Spiders: 26:3
wisdom of b. 26:3
Behaviour 138:3
science of b. 138:5
so much b. 68:1
Behaviourism 9:1
Being: elemental b. 115:5
Belief: essence of b. 1 18:8
Believe 10:4
Believer 137:2

Believes only what he sees 133:2
Believing elders 141:6
Benefactor of mankind 129:5
Bernal, J D 15:7
Bible 27:5, 88:4
Bindings: sterile b. 39:6
Biology 66:5
curse of b. 36:5
Blacksmith 3:2
Blockheads 114:3
Blood: why b. is red 48:1
Body: b. is a machine 149:1
b. is an old crock 132:2
b. sinks into death 132:2
Boffin 32:4
Bokes: olde b. 33:4
Boltzmann, Ludwig 22:3
Bomb 34:6
Book 29:6, 82:7

adversary had written a b. 18:4
b. of five thousand words 121:2
b.’s a b. 29:6

damned thick square b. 163:3
little b. 20:6
Books 28:6, 33:4

b. about crystals 129:7

b. and experiments 17:7

b. and scientific experiments 80:3

b. are lies 28:6 making of b. 19:4
Bottiney . . . knowledge of plants 45:5
Brahe, Tycho 28:8

Brain-drain 23:7

Brain is the organ of longevity 131:9
Breeding behaviour 42:2
Broad-minded 35:1

Brothers: two b. . . . eight cousins 69:3
Buddha 119:2
Burning glass 6:5

Cage with seven locks 71:8
Cain’s race 47:7
Calculators 27:11
Cambridge people 26:1
Cancer’s a funny thing 68:8
Cannon-balls may aid the truth 99:3
Capital: dangerous to c. 120:7
Capitalism 16:8, 94:5
problems of twentieth-century c. 74:4
Capitalists: overthrow of c. and
bureaucrats 94:2
Car 121:3

Cardinals: Most Eminent and Most
Reverend Lords C. 61:3
Career questions 65:2
Cat 31:3
Catholic 32:1
Cats 1:4
Cause 10:7

c. and theory 34:8

c. of what is happening 122:2
Causes 11:6
ignorance of c. 12:1
Cavendish 3:12
Cemetery 152:2
Centre of gravity 30:7
Century of biology 157:1
Certain because it is impossible 146:5
Chain reaction 38:4
Chaldeans 19:6
Chance 7:7, 10:7, 116:8
c. and necessity 44:3
leaving nothing to c. 134:4
Change: c. . . . unchanging 163:2
cultural c. 155:7

Character ... out of balance 87:4
Characters: written c. 39:4
de Chardin, Teilhard 119:6
Chariot: the flying c. 42:8
Chartres 1:3
Chemistry 80:6, 150:3

171 Index

c. and biology 38:7
c. without catalysis 107:3
future progress of c. 59:1
organic c. 164:2
Chemists in Scotland 138:4
Chess . . . pieces as living souls 127:2
Chessboard 92:5
Chiasmata: counting of c. 42:1
Chicken in potentia 82:5
Child: c. of the new generation 73:5
throw out the c. with the bath 86:5
Children ... do not learn 136:4
Chimaera bombinating in a vacuum
126:5

Chimpanzee: one c. not a c. 166:4
Chinese 138:7
C. learning 33:1
Chivalry: age of c. 27:1 1
Christ 21:9

Christianity : rise of C. 29:4
Church: Apostolic C. of Rome 61:3
C. welcomes technological progress
119:5

Churches: c. of the earth 46:3
Circles 140:2
Circuit 99:8

Circumference: twice the c. 48:2
City of Heaven 26:5
Civil servant 1 3 1 :4
Civilisation 34:7, 81:5
benefits of c. 149:7
Chinese c. 109:7

Civilisations: contact with strange c.
77:5

Clarke’s First Law 35:6
Class: c. of all classes 130:6
c. of propositions 130:7
c. rule 102:1

c. struggle in history 103:4
Clepsydra 122:3
Codes: blind c. 45:7
Colleague 8:5

Collection of prejudices 50:9
College: rooms at c. 87:5
Committee: c. is a cul-de-sac 36:3
c. . . . wrong most of the time 105:2
Committees 110:3
Common sense 1:1, 50:9, 147:7
trained and organised c.s. 78:9
Communism : C. is Soviet power 94: 1
rise of C. 28:7

Community: scientific c. 126:8
Complex: military-industrial c. 52:9
Complexity of behaviour 138:3
Complicated 2:3

Composite things 27:6
Computer: c. simulation 99:7
electronic c. 85:7

Concealment and yet revelation 30:6
Conceits: tedious metaphysical c. 105:1
Concepts 84:2
fundamental c. 52:5

Conclusions: largely inarticulate c. 87:7
necessary c. 117:7
Concubines 63:4
Conjecture: art of c. 17:8
Conquistador : nothing but a c. 59:6
Consciousness . . . comprehensibility
50:6

Consequence 58:5
Conservative 69:1
Consistency: a foolish c. 53:3
Constants: all great physical c. 104:3
Constellations: fiction of c. 45:7
Constraints 143:4
Contemplation 26:2
c. of crystals and magnets 137:5
Controller of the controller 89:6
Convictions: shall not renounce our c.
153:7

Corn: newe c. 33:4
two ears of c. 144:3
Cosmopolitan 90:6
Cost : counteth the c. 20:2
rate the c. 136:3
Costs : real c. 3 1 :4
Count 62:4
Counting 127:3

Countries : the most advanced c. 94:5
Cowboys 15:5
Creation 1:8, 141:3
a new kind of c. 119:1
c. of man as taught in the Bible 141:3
scientific c. 90:2
Creator: c. of matter 46:2
the all-wise c. 70:2
Creature 27:9
Credit 43:1

Crisis in the history of mankind 41:6
Crocodile: c. . . . Kapitsa’s name for
Rutherford 85:3
Crystal: c. is a pattern 77:9
c. lacks rhythm 161:2
Crystallisation 141:5
Crystallographers 27:8
Crystals: contemplation of c. 137:5
properties of c. 46:6
very naughty c. 129:8
Cube: phantom c. 86:3
Cubists 5:5

172 Index

Cultivator of science 160:5
Culture 10:10, 25:8
Cultures : evolution of c. 96:7
traditional c. 139:6

Cumulative: scientific activity is ... c.
134:2

Cupid 26:6

Curvature of space 160:2

Darwin 54:8, 156:3
Davy, Sir Humphrey 16:4
Death: d. is an advantage to life 109:2
O million-murdering D. 128:5
Declaiming . . . calculating 82:1
Deduction : right order of d. 44:5
Defeated 35:4
Define and divide 119:8
Definition of life 140:5
Delegated 3:4

Democracies : People’s D. 34:4
Democracy 2:1, 109:8
Demons: monstrous d. 122:3
Descent: related by d. 91:2
Design 93:1
Despair 30:2
Destiny of countries 24:8
Detection : art of d. 49:2
Determinism in science 17:5
Devices: evil d. 19:1
Devil 47:6

Diagonal of a square 120:4
Dictum: practical d. 65:3
Diderot 47:1

Die: God casts the d. 51:2
Digestion: processes of d. 71:7
Dilemma: horns of d. 88:5
Dinosaur or a zeppelin 104:6
Diogenes 47:2
Dirt 48:5
Discoveries 12:4
epoch-making d. 75:5
scientific d. 118:4
Discovery: real d. 26:2
Disease 3:8

promotion and transmission of d.
115:2

Diseases: d. of the rich ... of the poor
132:4

Disestablishment of science 25:2
Dispute: d. between a Moslem and a
Christian 115:8

d. between two chemists 115:8
Divination about Heaven and Earth
165:9

Division: d. of labour 11:3

intellectual d. 134:3
Doctor and Saint 113:5
Doctors . . . charlatans 90:5
Dodo 31:2
Dog’s name 15:1
Door: Plato’s d. 79:8
Double within a period 125:1
Dwarf 46:1

Earth: foundations of the e. 18:5
real face of e. 132:1
solid e. 40:1

sweet spontaneous e. 40:4
East 55:3

E. is a university 41:4
Eastern ethics, Western techniques 131:3
Eating and drinking 136:12
Eclipses: modus of lunar e. 123:9
Economists 27:11
Ecosystem 102:3
Editing: products of e. 156:1
Education 3:3, 27:4, 117:4, 138:6
Educator 3:3
Egg 29:2, 46:3
everything from an e. 71:3
Egghead 143:1
Electric light 24:7
Electricity 46:6
Electrons 23:5
Elements: four e. 136:12
Elite: scientific-technological e. 52:9
Empiricism: domain of e. 52:5
Empiricist 133:2
Encyclopedist 47:1
Energy 35:7, 131:7

e. of a prosperous middle class 161:5
Engine: Analytical E. 11:4, 97:1
Difference E. 97:1
Engineer: greatest e. 82:8
Engineering 159:2
England 24:4
E.’s ruin 105:6
English: E. hierarchy 125:3
plain E. words 33:5
Englishman : lousy E. 54:5
Enterprise: private e. 79:1
Enthusiasm 139:2
Entropy 35:7
negative e. 134:8
Epitaph 159:3

Equilibrium: chemical e. 93:3
Equipment 31:4
Erotics 10:8
Error 66:4
fruitful e. 115:7

173 Index

philosophic e. 38:10
syllabus of the principal e. 119:4
Erudition and agriculture 145:8
Eternal in the transitory 161:1
Ethics: code of e. 113:4
Euclid 8:3, 15:5, 27:5
Euclidean postulate 22:4
Eureka 6:2
Europe 55:3
glory of E. 27:11

Everything: e. flows onward 114:7

e. is organized matter 109:5
Evil 28:2

Evolution: man’s mental e. 52:1
Evolutionism in China 77:6
Examination 126:9
Excellence: supreme e. 143:6
Exceptions: no e. 17:5
Expansion . . . complexity . . . decay
116:4

Expenditure rises to meet income 116:3
Expense: damnable e. 33:8
Experience 162:6

Experiences: complex of our e. 52:5
Experiment 131:3
anyone can try by patient e. 15:6
doubt and e. 21:9
systematic e. 51:1
Experimental philosophy 155:5
Experimental work 17:9
Experimentalists 96:6
Experiments: books and e. 17:7
Expert 22:1, 72:3
Experts 142:3
Explain 31:2
Explanation 34:5
Explanations 17:3
Explorers: Society of E. 121:7
Explosives 34:6

Exteriors have their exteriors 161:8
Extra-scientific interests 149:6
Eye: curious texture of the e. 109:10
microscopic e. 123:5

Fabric of the Heavens 106:9
Fact: atomic f. 163:9
mathematical f. 30:7
merciless f. 92:5
ugly f. 78:4

Facts: f. are chiels 28:4

f. are ventriloquist’s dummies 78:1
f. do not speak 121:4

new f. 23:6

science is built up with f. 121:5
Faith 41:4

f. is a fine invention 45:6
traditional f. 63:3
unqualified f. 105:5
Falsifiability of a system 123:6
Fame and Money 34:1
Fantasy: role of f. 94:3
Faraday, Michael 56:2
Father 151:5
Fatigue 115:2

Favours from Nature 106:1
Feed 24:8

Feelings: religious f. 42:5
Field of observation 116:8
Fighting: resistance without f. 143:6
Filaments: living f. 42:7
Finger: don’t bite my f. 98:5
Fire 72:6
f. . . . ice 60:2
the element of f. 48:3
First . . . last 33:2
Fittest of all 30:1
Fixity of sun and earth 62:3
Flag of contemporary science 85:1
Flavius Josephus 88:4
Flesh: lusts of the f. 100:8
Flies: breeding of f. 42:1
Flowers: letting a hundred f. blossom
101:7

Fog is unrhythmic 161:2
Fold, spindle or mutilate 80:4
Fool of this generation 64:2
Fools: you damned f. 159:3
Force: fighting strength of a f. 90:9
f. . . . thought 53:1
Foreknowledge 38:8
Form: f. is a diagram of forces 147:1
icily regular in f. 100:9
Perfect F. 108:2
problems of f. 146:8
Formalism: value of a f. 118:9
Formulae 36:7
Fornication 39:6, 77:7
Fourier 148:1
Fourth dimension 93:1
France 141:4

Frankfurtemess and Sauerkrautitude
108:5

Free: f. electrons 16:7
f. time 24:3
Freedom 37:1, 54:4
amount of f. 36:6
f. is not an essential 146:1
f. to research 24:3
Fundamental research: value of f.r.
158:2

174 Index

Furnaces: worship of your f. 22:10
Future 1:2, 69:2
feeling for the f. 138:7

f. directed society 1 39:8
intolerable to know the f. 104:2

Futurity 138:1

Galaxies: blizzard of g. 111:6
Galileo 61:3, 93:2, 119:6
Gallantry: French g. 99:6
Gallows 28:1
Gear: guid g. 135:1
General: G. Electric 48:4

g. in the particular 161:1
Generalization : joy of sudden birth of a

g. 90:2

Generals 149:3

Genes of the new generation 109:2
Genius 30:5

g. of the last generation 64:2
Gentlemen 29:5
Geometrical terms 144:1
Geometrises: God g. continually 120:9
Geometry 6:1, 8:3, 26:4, 120:3
a singular g. 1 15:3
basic and everlasting g. 108:2
g. enlightens the intellect 79:8
hand of g. 58:4

ludicrous state of solid g. 120:1
they have not learnt g. 49:5
those who teach g. 59:5
German Physical Society 93:7
German spirit 149:5
Ghost: no g. in the machine 131:8
Giant’s Causeway 81:6
Giants: shoulders of g. 46:1
Globe-fish 145:5
Gluttonous science 153:10
Gnomon 124:1

Go-getters: best young g.-g. 162:3
Goals: confusion of g. 52:6
national g. 140:3

God 3:7, 26:4, 36:2, 58:7, 68:5, 79:6,
165:7

art hostile to G. 122:3
G. and the Devil 77:8
G.’s business 129:1
G. does arithmetic 62:8
G. from the machine 97:3
G. geometrises 120:9
G. has waited 86:6
G. in clouds 122:8

G. is like a skilful geometrician 26:4
G. is one 36:2
G. is subtle 52:7

G. made the integers 90:1
G. not only plays dice 71:5
G. took the spinning-jenny 166:2
real proof of the existence of G. 41:5
relenting G. 128:5
surer way to G. 85:6
God: to be considered a g. 1 19:8
Gods: of the g. I know nothing 125:6
recourse to the g. 122:2
Goethe 65:2
Gold 16:7
Good . . . evil 28:2
Gordian: the younger G. 63:4
Gostak distims the doshes 113:2
Governing class 42:2
Government: all errors in g. 38:10
encouraged by g. 145:8
forms of g. 122:6
Grammar-school 136:5
Grammarian . . . wizard 83:3
Grass: two blades of g. 129:5
why g. is green 48:1
Gravitation 29:7
Gravity 22:8, 136:1
Great men 147:2

Greek: ancient G. temperament 68:2
Greenwich 147:4
Growth: problems of g. 146:8
Guitar: on a blue g. 142:4
Gunpowder 12:4, 39:0

Habit 80:2

h. of analysis 106:4
Hand 25:4

Hands: use of their h. 135:2
Happens: everything that h. 10:5
Happiness and science 137:8
Harlots 122:1
Harmony: h. divine 106:8
h., order and proportion 26:6
Haruspex 31:5
Hath: him that h. not 20:1
Hazard 128:3
Heaven: bottles of h. 18:5
Heavens: solid spheres in the h. 23:8
starry h. 84:3

when the h. were a . . . blue arch 58:6
Hell: h. in a grain of sand 111:5
h. must be isothermal 1 6: 1
Hen . . . egg 29:2
Heresies . . . superstitions 78:7
Heretics: condemn as h. 62:3
Herodicus 107:8
Highgate 2:6
Hindus 20:10

175 Index

Historian 1:2
Historians 96:7

Historical movement: laws of h.m. 149:2
History 141:1, 153:1
h. of human government 41:6
h. of nature ... h. of mankind 103:7
h. . . . part of natural h. 102:8
we are part of h. 69:8
Hobgoblin of little minds 53:3
Holograph 139:3
Holophrase 9:7
Home 92:6

Homer: voice of H. 68:8
Honesty 47:5
House is a machine 39:8
Human: brevity of h. life 125:6
h. being in the making 64:4
h. progress 36:1

h. values 1 19:1

so narrow h. wit 132:2
Humanist 134:1
Humanities 35:1
science and h. 25:8
Hunt down error 40:5
Huxley 79:6
Hypothesis 142:2
no need of that h. 92:3
slaying of a beautiful h. 78:4
Hypotheses: I feign no h. 110:5

I am become death 1 13:3
I contradict myself 161:7
I do not search; I find 118:7
Ice . . . water 133:1
Idea 102:6, 151:8
excellent i. 62:6

i. of transformation 118:5
i. of wholeness 118:5
new i. 13:8

Ideas 1:7, 15:4, 32:4
correct i. 102:2
dead i. 152:2

i. which think for me 90:7
new i. 87:1, 98:9
precise i. 1 52:6
same i. 7:3
socialistic i. 105:4
Ignorance 145:9
i. in action 66:3

i. is better than knowledge 57:2
Imagination 152:7
i. in science 57:4
Immortality 40:3
Importance 81:1
Impossible 35:6, 146:5

eliminated the i. 49:3
i. to understand 49:6
Improvement of any knowledge 8:2
Inca pattern 108:2
Incident: the curious i. 49:2
Incommensurable 120:4
Incompetence: level of i. 118:2
Increase of knowledge 11:2
Independence to all mature scientists
121:6

Index- learning 122:7
Indian: poor I. 122:8
Individual: the history of the i. 66:2
Western i. 154:3

Indoctrination: compulsory humanistic
i. 60:6

Industrial revolution 161:5
Industrialisation 21:3
Industry 86:8

Inheritance: our intellectual i. 87:2
Innovation: important scientific i. 119:7
Innovator 12:2
traitorous i. 135:8
Inquiry: scientific i. 92:4
Inquisition 33:6
Institution 53:6

Instruction: scientific i. is a craft 80:2
Instructions 5:3, 136:8
Integer: the final i. 166:8
Integrity 4:4

Intellect: i. of man 166:1
test of i. 56:1
Intellectual 9:4, 30:3
an i. is a parasite 89:5
i. milieu 162:3
i. self-improvement 121 :7
status as an i. 114:4
Intellectuals are like women 100:3
Intelligence 47:5, 56:5, 78:2
Intelligentzia 52:1
Intercourse: lewd i. 22:4
Interiors have their interiors 161 :8
Intuition: physical i. 118:9
Invention 30:1
i. of lingering death 107:8
Inventions 135:2
i. . . . mere amusements 98:4
rate of i. 96:1

Investigation: scope of the i. 127:4
Irrationals: theory of i. 125:4
Irreverence 25:5

Japan: building of a new J. 104:1
J. of temples, teahouses 41:2
Jews: contribution of J. 36:6

176 Index

no entry to J. 93:7
Johnson, Samuel 22:9
Journal 154:4

Kekule 67:2
Kepler: time of K. 36:7
Keynes: no one . . . cleverer than K.
86:9

Kiln full of pottery 115:3
King: the last k. 46:4
Kinsai 122:1

Know : k. everything and believe nothing
47:1

k. thyself 3:6

those who k. are silent 121:2
we must not k. 153:10
we must k., we will k. 73:4
Knowing: gratification of k. 36:8
Knowledge 125:6
accumulated k. 11:2
compartmentalization of k. 68:3
discipline of k. 161:5
human k. 44:5
increaseth k. 18:3
inductive k. 159:4
K. but Action 78 :3
k. is an attitude 87:4
k. is a matter of science 101:6
k. is a sacred cow 145:1
k. is one 99:5
k. is transmitted 21:8
k. itself is power 12:5
k. not in books 63:6
k. of the mind 59:9
k. of thyself 85:6

k. of Art before time 87:8
mass of k. 54:3

no higher or lower k. 94:10
scientific acquisition of k. 96:4
struggle for k. 134:5
with equal passion . . . sought k. 130:9

Laboratory: 1. exercise 17:9
first-rate 1. 21:1
Lagrange 108:1

Land where dirt is clean 111:5
Landing a man on the moon 86: 1
Landmarks: saddest and strangest of all

l. 104:6

Language 22:2, 63:7
1. is human reason 95:1
learn your own 1. 22:5
mathematical 1. 62:2
Lao-Tze 121:2
Latin 33:5

Lavoisier 36:4

Law: 1. by which we live 87:6
1. of contradiction 101:5
1. of evolution 54:8
moral 1. 84:3
Laws: faith in 1. 123:7
general 1. 42:6
1. and formulae 73:1
1. of history 149:2
1. of matter 104:5
1. of mind 104:5

1. of physics ... 1. of geometry 163:9
1. of social and political development
159:4

1. of space and time 83:2
1. of the objective world 101:8
Learn by doing 140:4
Learned Society 2:2, 29:1
Learning: Chinese 1. . . . and Western 1.
33:1

1. in old age ... 1. in youth 5:7
Learnt 151:5
Legislation 16:3
Leisure 7:4

Leonardo da Vinci 153:5
Lesbia 77:7
Less is more 106:2
Lever 6:3

Leviathan : great L. called a Common-
wealth 74:2

Liberty: mansion house of 1. 106:7
Libraries: out of the 1. 24:2
Lie: don’t 1. if you don’t have to 145:4
Life 2:5, 17:4, 55:1, 144:6
all organic 1. 42:7
blessed 1. 148:10
definition of 1. 140:5
eight hundred 1. spans 94:1
1. is short 74:1

1. of science . . . art . . . religion 134:1
pattern of 1. 82:9
problems of 1. 163:10
try to reduce 1. to physics 157:5
understanding of 1. 157:1
Light 107:5

1. is snatched backward 111:6
particles of 1. 1 10:4
Lightning 59:2
Lilavati 18:2
Limit to thinking 163:8
List 166:7
Listen 6:4

Literature 27:10, 152:5
Indian 1. 89:4

Live: how shall we 1. 149:4

177 Index

Living: business of 1. 141:4

Locke sank into a swoon 166:2

Locomotive 142:1

Lodestone 5:4

Logic 16:3

Logician 49: 1

London 2:6

Love 8:6

l. finds admission 166:5

L. waves 43:2

Lover: propositions of a 1. 135:7

Luck 38:3

Luther 93:2

Luxury: Persian 1. 76:5

Machine : highly-tuned physiological m.
127:1

perfectly designed m. 96:3
Machines 22:10, 139:1
Magic 25:6

m. circle of mathematical formulae
36:7

primitive word m. 113:1
Magnet 5:4, 12:4, 85:5
Mahomet 93:2

Maintenance: art of motorcycle m.
119:3

Makers: M. -Possible 128:2

M. -to-Happen 128:2
M.-to-Pay 128:2
M.-to-Work 128:2

Mammal 127:1
Man : m. and science 72:9
m. is a knot, a web, a mesh 132:2
m. is . . . machinery 153:2
m. is not a fly 123:5
m. is the measure of all things 125:5
m. of science 36:8

m. that great and true amphibian 27:1
m. wants to know 109:3
m. was the measure of all things 120:6
m. who convinces the world 1 14:6
m.’s fearless quest for truth 67:6
m.’s social being 101:2
not really a m. of science 59:6
sick m. neglecting himself 128:4
study of mankind is m. 33:3
the average m. 126:3
tragedy of scientific m. 96:2
unhappiness of m. 75:1
Mankind 103:3
m. . . . its destiny 42: 1
m.’s epitome 49:4

Manners: m. of various peoples 45:2
scientists have odious m. 151:6

Manuscript in the drawer 50:1
Margin is too narrow 57:1
Marx 54:8

M. was a philosophical Oscar Wilde
109:1

Marxism 150:3
Marxists 68:4, 153:8
Master 39:2

Masters of us ordinary men 59:9
Mastery: degree of m. 80:6
Material . . . function . . . work 106:3
Materialism and empiricism 83:1
Mathematical difficulties 50:10
Mathematical formulae 36:7
Mathematical heads 7:11
Mathematical physics 69:7
Mathematical processes 79:3
Mathematical relations 88:3
Mathematical science: most abstract
branch of m.s. 97:1
Mathematical theorem 96:6
Mathematician 8:5
weapons of the m. 23:3
Mathematicians: French m. at Peru 99:6
m. are like lovers 58:5
Mathematicks 26:3
m. are inferior to none 95:6
mystical m. 26:5

Mathematics 7:4, 28:8, 38:6, 1 17:7, 147:7
advance and perfecting of m. 109:4
domain of m. 1 26:4
imagination ... in the science of m.
155:3

knowledge of m. 13:6
M. is Symbolic Logic 130:7
M. is the door 13:5
m. is the life of the gods 1 12:5
m. is written for mathematicians 39:7
secret of success in m. 93:4
study of m. 100:8
ugly m. 70:6
Matter 5:2, 153:6
m. is a holograph 139:3
shapeless m. 27:9
Matthew Principle 20: 1
Maupertuis 155:1

Means: m. . . . motive . . . object 105:3
perfection of m. 52:6
Measure 148:3
m. and number 20:7
Measured the water of the sea 19:5
Measures: standard m. 100:1
Mecanique Celeste 36:2
Mechanical arts carry a social stigma
165:8

178 Index

Mechanics Institutions 100:4
Medicine . . . mathematics . . . theology
98:1

Men: m. of letters 134:1
m. . . . weighed not counted 38:1
m. who make for the m. who explain
70:8

specialised but equally ordinary m.
61:2

MENE 19:7

Mental and moral qualities 156:2
Metallurgist 4:1
Metaphysics 23:4
Method 6:1
experimental m. 134:3
Microscope 56:6, 143:5
power of the m. 84:1
Microscopes: gas m. of hextra power
45:4

m. are prudent 45:6
Military: m. purposes 120:5
m. science 159:8

Mill of exquisite workmanship 79:3
Millikan mote 60:1
Mind 4:3, 5:2, 25:4
barbaric m. 67:3
English m. 53:2
great m. 27:4

m. must sweat a poison 95:3
Minds 27:4

every corner of our m. 87:1
m. of experts 142:3
Minister for Science 68:7
Mirrors : two concave m. 72:9
Missionary 142:1
Mistake 4:6

he who never made a m. 138:8
Mistakes: make m. on purpose 99:7
Mode of existence 55:1
Model 136:3
mechanical m. 148:2
m. of treatment 41:2
m. . . . right, but irrelevant 50:8
Modem: m. socialism 163:6
possibilities of m. technology 161:5
Mogul diamonds 38:2
de Moivre’s death 14:1
Molecular biology 28:2, 140:1
Money 131:5

m. on war ... on science 63:1
Moon 7:8, 7:9, 29:1, 153:4
clown on the m. 93:5
horned m. 37 ;2

m. dotted with Soviet names 137:7
secret from the latest m. 146:4

Moonshine: talking m. 131:7
Morality: religious basis for m. 113:4
Moses 40:1

Motions: celestial m. 106:6
Motivation 73:5
Motorcycle 119:3
Mouse-trap 53:5

Movement of really heroic dimensions
157:1

Movements: living m. 110:3
m. of the largest bodies 92:2
Moves: clear-cut stupid m. 109:6
complicated stupid m. 109:6
Multiplication: no national m. table
33:7

Muscle: function of m. 94:6
Music 23:1

m. of the spheres 26:6
Mutations 5:9

Myth 67:1
Myths 143:2

Nagasaki 25:7

Name in print 29:6

National defence 34:4

National science 33:7

National wealth 143:3

Natural philosophy 13:3

Natural science: errors in n.s. 38:10

Natural selection 42:3, 96:7, 156:2

n. s. is a mechanism 57:5
stringency of n.s. 117:5

Nature 15:8

Nature 1:5, 1:6, 4:2, 12:1, 27:8, 32:3,
52:3, 57:2, 65:1, 74:2
And n. must obey necessity 136:6
Ask N. few questions 57:6
conquest of n. 43:3
drive away N. with a pitchfork 76:6
ignorance of n. 75:1
knowledge of the n. of things 135:4
laws of n. 39:5, 57:4
man masters n. 25:6
most curious operations of n. 129:6
n. and n.’s laws 122:5
N. composes . . . poems 129:3
n.’s development into man 102:8
n. does not make jumps 96:5
n. does nothing in vain 111:4
n. is a social category 97:5
n. is animated 92:2
n. is not a temple 151:1
n. is the shape 141:1
n. methodized 123:4
n., . . . must be obeyed 12:6

1 79 Index

n.’s mystery 135:6
N. of a picture of herself 79:2
N.’s way 7:1
observation of n. 46:5
secrets of n. 150:1
solid ground of n. 165:5
sympathy with . . . man and n. 148:4
treat N. ... in perspective 32:3
up against N. 61:1
works of N. 35:5
Navigator: Italian N. 38:4
Navigators: ablest of n. 63:5
Necessity 44:2, 117:8, 136:6
Network 82:2
Neutrinos 152:3

New thing: to hear some n.t. 20:4
New World 38:4
News: weekly n. magazines 32:1
Newspapers: daily n. 32:1
Newton 24:5, 26:2, 29:7, 93:2, 122:5,
147:5, 153:3, 155:1
N. . . . last of the magicians 87:2
N. to Hartley 36:7
N. with his prism 164:7
Newtonian . . . Pasteurian 68:4
Newtrality: marveilous n. 44:1
Night-air: mystical moist n.-a. 161:9
Nightingale, Florence 1 1 2:4
Nineveh 19:8
Novice 71:2
Number 80:5

n. of protons in the universe 50:3
Numbered 19:7

Objective . . . subjective 71:6
Objectives of their research 86:2
Obligation : a sense of o. 40:2
Observation: scientific o. 11:5
Observations 76:3
Observatory of Ulugh Beg 132:6
Observer: social position of the o. 101:1
Occam’s Electric Razor 85:7
Occasional genius or the occasional
lucky thought 161:5
Office: participation of o. 81:3
Old man 151:5
One and one are two 50:5
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny 68:6
Operational matters 21:2
Operations of analysis 11:4
Opinion 3:10
everything else is o. 44:4
Opinions: o. different from his own
131:6

stiff in o. 49:4

Opponents 119:7
Opposites 21:10
Order 26:5
faith in o. 59:4

o. all things 20:7

o. in variety 123:1

o. is Heaven’s first law 123:3
Orderliness 134:8
Organisation 85:1

laws of effective o. 15:2
Sexual O. 21:5
undisciplined o. 126:8
Organism: living o. 134:8
Organisms 91:2
Orgy 155:2
Orientals 24:7

Ostentation of creative power 166:6
Outlooks: fresh o. 98:9
Overstudious 107:6

Page 534 . . . second chapter 48:6
Painting is a science 39:5
Pangloss 155:5
Particulars: Minute P. 21:6
Party: the p., the government and J V
Stalin 98:2

Passion between the sexes 100:6
Passions 69: 1

Past; bad enough to know the p. 104:2
foretell the Soviet p. 115:4

p. . . . future 39:3, 114:5

p. . . . present . . . future 73:7
remember the p. 133:6
Path of improvement 34:6
Pathology 154:5

Paths are made by walking 98:8
Patronage 137:3
Patterns 97:2

basic grammatical p. 162:1
Peace 4:6
Peach tree 41:3
People 3:9
p. are hanged 55:5
to write for the p. 148:7
Perception that something ought to be
done 159:5

Perfection of the life, or of the work
166:1

Persons: philosophical p. 135:5
Perspective 32:3
Peter Principle 118:2
Peter the Hermit 93:2
Phenomena 11:5
discovering the causes of p. 93:6
Philosopher 136:10

1 80 Index

P.’s Stone 100:2
Philosophers 103:5
p. are all dying out 135:3
p. . . . followers of rich men 47:2
Philosophical persons 135:5
Philosophical Transactions 78:5
Philosophy 32:5, 135:2
actual p. 22:7
cold p. 85:4

experimental p. 110:5, 155:5
Marxist p. 101:8
matters of P. 111:1
political p. 38:7
p. . . . universe 62:6
Phoenix 48:3
Phosphorus 27:7
Physical Review 49:6
Physical Science 7:10
progression of p.s. 43:3
Physician 74:1
hands of the p. 20:8
p. . . . philosopher 165:3
p.’s oath 73:8
Physicists 40:6
great p. 75:5
p. have known sin 113:6
Physics 2:1

every statement in p. 98:7

good p. 158:5

in p. pain 136:9

laws of p. 57:3, 57:4

p., beware of metaphysics 111:3

p. . . . Book of Genesis 130:1

p.-envy 36:5

p. . . . makes old hearts fresh 136:11
p. . . . too hard for physicists 73:3
revolution in p. 108:5
top problems in p. 113:7
Physiology 69:7
Picasso 162:2
Pill: the P. 116:1
Plan 155:6
divine p. 112:4
p. research 121:6

Planet: what is on in another p. 143:5
Plans 28:3
Plato 26:4

Pleasure: momentary p. 33:8
p. ... of geometric science 165:6
Poem: epic p. 37:3
Poet 22:2, 146:7. 152:7
P. the Monarch 102:5
Poetry: p. . . . geometry 58:2
p. . . . science 165:4
Poets 38:3

Policy: few may originate p. 118:1
Political economy: fundamentals of p.e.
100:4

Political strife 24:4
Politician: Utopian p. 104:7
Politicians and theologians 88:7
Politics 20:1 1
infection of p. 25:2
Population 100:5
Portrait: a lady’s p. 75:2
Position: the p. ridiculous 33:8
Possible: all things p. 11:6
Post: academic p. 83:4
Posterity 102:7
Power 23:2

fundamental concept in social science
is p. 130:8

greatest p. available 50:2
p. . . . influence 89:3
p. of dominant groups 130:5
p. of steady misrepresentation 42:4
Pythagorean p. 130:9
Powers: absolute and forbidden p. 1 12:3
Practical sciences 5:6
Practice: social p. 102:2
Practices 34:1
Prayer: place of p. 109:9
Present . . . past 1 14:5
Priesthood 42:2
Priest : the last p. 46:4
Priestly caste 7:4

Priests in the realm of nature 88:7
Princes 4:5

Princeton University 38:5
Principia 160:4
Principle: animating p. 66:6
Printing 12:4
new invention of p. 164:3
p. -house in hell 21:8
Problem 2:3, 33:9
choice of p. 148:9
Problems 162:4

all p. are finally scientific p. 137:1
one of the great p. 58:1
Professor 83:4

Professors: inventions of the p. 24:2
our American p. 95:5
two Yankee p. 81:2
Programme for the future 103:2
Progress 133:4, 148:6
scientific and technical p. 81:5
technical p. 96:1
Project 3:7
Projecting Age 34:2
Projectors: political p. 144:2

181 Index

Prophet 34:7
I am no p. 99:4

Proportion: arithmetical . . . geometric
121:1

Prosperity 43:3
p. of the nation 109:4
Providence: hand of p. 147:5
Psychoanalysis 104:6
Psychoses of hate and destructiveness
52:1

Ptolemaic system 1 :8
Public opinion 13:7
safety valve of p.o. 92:4
Publish 4:8

Publishing faster than you think 117:2
Puffin . . . Baffin . . . Boffin 32:4
Pumping-engine 8:6
Purposiveness 84:4
Pursuit: intellectual p. 87:3
p. of an idea ... p. of a whole 131:1
Pythagoreans 88:5

Quality: I possess every good q. 128:1
Quantity or number 77:4
Quantum 28:5
Quantum physics 160:1
Quark 65:4
Quart-mug 24:5
Quaternions 70:4
Queen: the White Q. 31:1
Q. Victoria . . . great paper-weight
159:6

Question: most subtle q. 126:5
Quincunxes 37:4
Quotations 34:9
I hate q. 53:4

Radiation of the sun 144:6
Radium 40:6
Rainbow: awful r. 85:4
Rational and the Real 108:5
Rationalist: militant R. 69:6
Reactionary 130:2
Readers 38:2
Reading 13:1
Realist : a super r. 56:7
Reality 56:6
nature of r. 69:5
Reason 9:2, 26:3, 69:1
what little r. 115:5

Reasons: entirely mathematical r. 45:1
r. for things 154:7
undemocratic r. 87:7
Record: dramatic shorthand r. 67:1
Recreations as adorn the Mind 95:6

Reductionists 157:5
References 32:2
Reflection and experiment 46:5
Refractive law 147:4
Refrain from doing things 58:8
Refuted by experience 123:6
Register 40:1
Regularities 123:7
Religion: mysteries of r. 164:3
r. but a childish toy 102:4
r. for mankind 108:3
R. is a way of life 69:5
r. is still parasitic 69:6
Religions: dead r. 163:1
Remedies : new r. 1 2:2
Renaissance and the Reformation 29:4
Republic 36:4

Reputation of knowing 145:9
Research 38:5, 105:2
aim of r. 98:6
freedom to r. 24:3
gloom of uninspired r. 165:1
outcome of any serious r. 153:9
r. is . . . art of the soluble 104:7
r. demands involvement 3:4
r. . . . leads to revolutions 147:6
r. means . . . 145:3
r. on fatigue 9:5
scientific r. 16:6, 52:9
Researcher . . . administrator 88:2
Researching 107:4
Resources: strange, sinister r. 35:4
Result and Fact 34:8
Revolution : r. in nomenclature 54:6
scientific r. 139:7
social r. 1 50:2
Revolutions 78:8
R. are infinite 166:8
Rich . . . scholars 20:9
Right to live 117:5
Robots 30:4

Rolls-Royce: chauffeur-driven R.-R.
31:4

Rome 154:6

Royal Society 3:10, 56:2, 76:1, 113:3
Ruin: roads to r. 122:4
Rules 4:4, 44:5
r. of football 4:9
R. of old 123:4
Russia 33:6
Rutherford 85:2

Sadist 123:8
Samarkand 132:6
Santa Claus 4:7

1 82 Index

Satellites of Mars 144:4
Satire 95:4

Saul becomes Paul ... 119:7
Savages: children . . . grow like s. 136:4
Scholars 1:7
Muslim s. 80:1
oddly virtuous . . . s. 25:3
s. . . . rich 20:9
School of theology 46:3
Schroedinger 47:3

Science 4:4, 14:3, 15:2, 15:4, 28:7, 33:2,
54:6, 66:6, 114:6, 121:3, 124:3, 130:5
applied s. 71:1
British s. 35:4
Category of s. 117:1
collecting s. . . . classifying s. 55:2
contemporary s. 114:3
cultivation of s. 43:4
development of Western S. 51:1
disciplines which analyse s. 124:3
disestablishment of s. 25:2
dismal s. 30:8
eel of s. 122:7
fair s. 67:5
first man of s. 36:8
flag of s. 33:6

foundations of physical s. 78:5
future belongs to s. 110:2
gleaming wings of S. 35:3
great tragedy of S. 78:4
growth of s. 78:8
Heavenly S. 37:1
history of s. 42:4, 66:2
hostility between s. and technology
73:2

latest discoveries of modern s. 94:4

men of s. 130:1, 131:4

modern s. 61:2

Mother of S. 107:2

music ... s. 23:1

national s. 33:7

natural s. 72:1, 72:8, 102:1

naughty thumb of s. 40:4

newe s. 33:4

next great task of s. 108:3

no national s. 33:7

oppositions of s. 20:5

product of mental labour — s. 103:6

progress of S. 79:2

pursuit of s. 121:6

questions of s. 62:1, 65:2

real s. 94:8

relations of s. and society 41:6

Republic of S. 121:7

s. advances with gigantic strides 165:2

s. and invention 36:6
s. and the humanities 25:8
s. . . . art 153:4
s. as a human activity 88:6
s. as training the mind 117:4

s becoming the study of organisms

161:6

s. . . . Chaldeans 19:6
s. clears the field 72:2
s. . . . curiosity and weak eyes 58:3
s. demands from a man all his life
117:3

s. . . . first word . . . last word 77:3

s. flatters no courtier 24:4

S. grows and Beauty dwindles 146:3

s. . . . happiness 38:1

s. has become adult 158:1

S. has lost her freedom 85:2

s. . . . history 38:9

s. . . . instrument of social change 13:9
s. is ... a cow 134:6
s. is also a way of life 69:5
s. is built up with facts 121:5
s. is not a system . . . 123:7
s. is organised knowledge 140:6
s. is said to be useful 70:5
s. is sensation 120:6
s. is spectrum analysis 89:7
s. is sytematised positive knowledge
133:4

s. is the first sin 112:2
s. is the great antidote 139:2
s. is the record of dead religions 163:1
s. is the religion of the suburbs 166:3
s. is the topography of ignorance 75:3
s. . . . literature 27:10
s. . . . magic 25:6, 59:4
s. . . . man 33:3
s. means . . . recipes 152:5
s. moves, but slowly 146:2
s. . . . Nagasaki 25:7
s. . . . new facts 23:6
s. . . . newest works 27:10
s. of history 103:7
s. of Man 62:5
s. of Nature 76:3
s. of physical phenomena 125:7
s. of society 125:7
s. of the beastly scientists 77:2
s. offers only three points of interest
157:2

s. . . . poetry 129:4
s. progresses 54:3
s. . . . reality 52:4
s. reassures 23:9

1 83 Index

s. . . . rest of society 125:2
s. . . . storehouse of facts 67:6
S. strict 36:2

s. . . . tree of knowledge 124:4
s. without conscience 107:7, 126:7
secret of s. 148:9
social s. 9:3, 30:8, 88:6, 102:1
Star-eyed. S. 30:2
Temple of S. 52:8
texture of the s. 40:3
the pursuit of s. 72:4
the strictest s. 94:3
to create for s. 148:7
true s. 33:3
universal s. 37:3
virtues of s. 25:3
wish to learn s. 22:5
Sciences 82:3
most advanced s. 34:4
natural and social s. 71:6
s. in the religious and in the intellec-
tual 80:1

s. of the Persians 80:3
s. that . . . become our country 136:4
s. touching numbers and proportions
33:5

Scientific conversation 29:5
Scientific journal : the first s.j. 132:5
Scientific merit: criterion of s.m. 157:3
Scientific project 162:3
Scientific research: thematics of s.r.
153:8

Scientific revolution 29:4
Scientific spirit 40:6
Scientific thought 36:1, 69:4
Scientific work: so-called s.w. 148:10
Scientist 5:8, 35:6
creative s. 73:6

distinguished but elderly s. 35:6
reasonable definition of a s. 125:1
s. and technician . . . easy dupes 63:2
s. . . . dictate to him 145:2
s. . . . emigration 23:7
s. . . . emotion 21:2
s. is an agent of change 155:7
Scientists 9:6, 35:2, 58:1
bourgeois s. 120:7
mediocre s. 21:1
no need of s. 36:4
sadistic s. 40:5
s. . . . are a team 163:5

s future 139:8, 139:9

s. ... on tap 35:2
socially responsible s. 74:3
Scotland: chemists in S. 138:4

pious S. 54:7
Scots . . . Chinese 68:2
Scripture 28:6

Sea-shore: boy playing on the s.-s. 111:2
Search 1 18:7

Sect : each s. has its truth 34:2
Sects and schisms which daily appear
164:3

Seed of any animal 45:1
Self or Soul 83:2
Self-regulation 118:5
Sense data 84:2
Senses 4:3

Seth vext us with Astronomie 47:7
Sex 10:8

Sexual intercourse 33:8
Shabby curate 9:6
Shadows: watching of s. 124:1
Shakespeare 14:2
Shipwreck 12:3
Shissel 159:1
Shoes: stout s. 135:4
Shoulders: stand on my s. 40:3
Sign 10:3

Simplicities of natural laws 162:5
Simplicity 148:5
Sin 10:1

no s. but ignorance 102:4
Situation . . . not as symmetrical 99: 1
Skepticism a virtue 105:5
Social science 9:3, 30:8
Socialism 94:4
Society 72:8, 130:4
form of s. 96:1
learned s. 29:1
modern s. 63:2
structure of s. 28:7
Sodium 16:4

Solar System: damn the S.S. 81:4
Solitary 7:11
Solution 33:9

s. of the population and food prob-
lems 157:1

s. of the problem of life 163:10
s. . . . problem 33:9

Something: learn s. about everything
79:4

s. that is technically sweet 114:1
Son of Heaven 39:4
Sophistry and illusion 77:4
Soul 48:2

deterioration of the s. 165:8
ruin of the s. 126:7
Souls 28:3, 87:8
Source of rationality 38:6

1 84 Index

Space: depths of s. 22:8
empty curved s. 160:2
long-range exploration of s. 86:1
relation of s. to time 126:1
S. and Time 25:9
s. research 60:6
world of s. 86:3

Spaces: infinite immensity of s. 116:7
Spaceship Earth 60:4
Space-travel is utter bilge 164:5
Sparta 88:7

Speak: s. not about what you have read
10:9

those who s. 121:2
Specialist 30:10

Species : existence of the s. 96:8
Speech 7:5

s. created thought 138:2
Spencer, Herbert 30:1
Spherical trigonometry 145:7
Spinning wheel 110:1
Spiral 75:4

Sponges . . . sand-glasses . . . strain-
bags 38:2
Springiness 76:2

Standards of modern scientific thought
158:2
Star 5:1
bright s. 37:2

Stars: distance of the farthest s. 41 :3
furthest s. . . . recede 111:6
State: principal men of our s. 120:2
The S. 79:1
States of being 108:5
Statistician 2:4
Statisticians 9:3
Statistics 91:1, 131:3
s. . . . her religion 112:4
Steam 1:3
s. engine 156:6
s. engines for sale 23:2
unconquer’d s. 42:8
Steinmetz 48:4
Step 7:8, 7:9
the first s. 154:2
Stereograph 75:2
Stone Age 35:3

Stooge: morally irresponsible s. 162:3
Stork 4:7
Strategy 149:3

Streptococcus is the test 163:7
Strife is justice 72:5
Stroke: one bold s. 75:6
Structure 10:7
appropriate social s. 43:4

notion of s. 118:5
s. of blind atoms 24:6
whole social s. 116:6
Structures 23:3
more mature s. 102:3
Student 8:1
Students 25:5

Studies: recommending useless s. 120:5
Study: s. is a weariness 19:4
to s., to finish, to publish 59:3
Stuff: Oh, that s. 131:6
s. of human nature 64:4
Stupid : how extremely s. 79:7
Stupidity 17:2
Success . . . failures 7 1 :4
Sun: s. is lost 48:3
the S. does not move 94:7
Superstition 12:3, 139:2
star-gazing s. 86:5

Survival of the fittest 30:1, 42:3, 156:3
Syllabus of the principal errors 119:4
Symbol 30:6

Symmetry: absolute s. 100:9
s. of the brain 95:3

Sympathy with both man and nature
148:4

Symptoms 71:2
Syracuse 75:6

Syrens : what song the S. sang 27:2
System: communistic s. 59:7
create a s. 21:7
formal logical s. 51:1
logical mathematic s. 64:3
most unstable s. 154:3
s. . . . cohesiveness 95:2
s. . . . opposite of a machine 157:4

s. is its own best analogue 22:6
Systems: causal s. 155:8

Tall: all men alike t. 30:9
Target: Military T. 151:8
Tax: you may t. it 56:3
Taxes: avoidance of t. 87:3
Taxi-cab 126:10
Teacher 4:8
Teachers: great t. 39:6
Technicians 122:4
Technological needs 119:1
Technological progress 119:5
Technology 8:1

t. of today ... t. of yesterday 60:5
Teleology in the natural sciences 103:1
Telescope . . . microscope 60:3
Theorising 155:4

Theory 34:8

185 Index

first rate t. ... 88:1
simplest t. 69:4

t. . . . right or wrong 50:8
Thermodynamics 3:11
Second Law of T. 1 39 :6
Thesis 38:5

Thicket of difficulties 62:5
Things: all t. are water 146:6
composite t. 27:6
mathematical t. 44:1

t. are in the saddle 54: 1
T. as they are 142:4
t. . . . linked 147:5
t. we are striving for 82:6
Think: to make people t. 123:8
what 1 1. 156:4

Thinkers: great revolutionary t. 109:1
Thinking: no style of t. 64:1
scientific t. 52:5
t. is forbidden 54:7
t. what nobody has thought 144:5
Thought: system of humane t. 67:3
t. and technique are scientific 130:4
t. . . . strangest clothing 67:2
Three times 30:1

Thrones of earth and heaven 138:2
Time 12:2, 54:2, 151:7
comfortable t.-lag 159:5
seeds of t. 136:7
t. and space 90:8
t. for sex 159:7
t. is money 29:3
t. . . . motion 160:3
t. . . . must have a stop 136:2
Tinkering : intelligent t. 50:7
Tips of the tongues of the age 162:2
Today’s city 114:2
Tool 6:6

Toothache 136:10

Towers: built in Heaven high t. 107:1
Tradition: cultural t. 116:6
Traditionalist 63:3
Transformation 118:5
Transformations: study of t. 95:2
Treasure-trove 103:8
Triangle 7:2
Troy 68:8
True 27:3, 30:11

Truism: profoundly erroneous t. 161:3
Truth 26:2, 34:5, 81:1, 99:4, 134:7
absolute t. 34:5
an aspect of t. 25:1
beleaguered t. 106:7
every t. has its sect 34:2
great t. 100:7

great ocean oft. 111:2
greater t. 34:5
objective t. 95:4
probable t. 59:5
scientific t. 43:4
speak the t. 70:1
sterile t. 115:7
taut t. 56:7
t. about nature 97:4
t. exists 24:1
t. from error 13:2

t. shall make you free 20:3
two sorts oft. 21:10
unendurable t. 34:5

Truths : new t. 78:7
profound t. 21 :10
Tuition 18:3
Turks 4:10

Turn down: something to t.d. 148:8
Tyranny 13:7

Umpire 3:5

Unconscious: collective u. 83:1
Understand 10:4
Understanding 25:6, 82:4
Unexpected: expect the u. 72:7
Unique: something u. about man 47:4
Unity: u. of all science 117:6

u. of opposites 101:5

Universe 16:6, 40:2, 101:5, 111:6, 131:2
author of the u. 92:3
secrets of the u. 88:3

u. is asymmetric 116:9
u. . . . magnificent 58:6

u. . . . queerer than we suppose 69:2
University of London 105:6

Urim and Thummim 88:7
Utility: immediate practical u. 72:4
Utopia 99:2

Utopian . . . aim of knowing 52:3
Utopias 16:5

Vacuum : a v. is repugnant to reason 45:3
nature abhors a v. 126:6
Valetudinarian 107:8
Value 150:1
Variables 66:5

Variations: how many are the v. 18:2
Variety: v. of wave states 160:1

v. . . . uniformity 27:8
Vectors 156:5

Veins: deeper v. in the mine of science
161:5

Versatile 153:5

v. eccentric individual 149.6

186 Index

Vice: v. and virtue 145:6
v. is still in its infancy 135:3
Victims: the little v. play 67:4
Vigour . . . talents . . . genius 92:7
Virgil’s Aenead 128:3
Virgins: learned v. 29:5
Virtues of science 25:3
Vision: where there is no v. 19:2
Voice: divine and nightly-whispering v.
37:3

Vortices: a thousand v. 58:6
Voyaging through strange seas of
Thought 164:7

War 74:4
Art of W. 44:2
w. is common 72:5
Water 89:1
drop of w. 49:1
w. has its history too 101:3
w. . . . ice 133:1
w. is the principle 146:6
w. . . . will also be square 34:3
Watson and Crick 41:5
Watt, James 156:6
Watt man 15:3

Way: if one w. be better 7:1

Wealth: routine acquisition of w. 96:4

Weapons ... of gigantic size 160:4

Wetter water 25:9

What hath God wrought 108:4

Wheat: origin of w. 55:6

Whereof one cannot speak 164:1

Whewell, William 139:4

Whirls . . . viscosity 127:5

Who was it who measured 19:5

Whole 7:6, 160:1

Wholeness 134:7

Why they are as they are 86:4

Wilde, Oscar 160:6

Wilderness 34:7
Windscale 111:5
Wisdom: a man of w. 18:1
Woman: w.’s breast 18:1
wrestling with a fine w. 134:5
Women: science . . . w. 14:3
Word: w. . . . thought . . . deed 65:5
w. of no master 76:4
Words: choice of w. 13:4
Work 3:9
scientific w. 78:6
w. . . . dies with the worker 94:9
w. expands to fill the time available
116:2

w., finish, publish 56:4
w. of a man’s life 97:6
w. without theorising 155:4
Workers: armed w. 94:2
Working class 103:4
World: amenity of the w. 70:7
cause of the w. 123:9
explicit scientific w. view 162:1
Marxist-Leninist w. outlook 90:4
system of the w. 92:3
the w. was created 1 54:7
thick w. scorned 128:6
this w. newly made 97:4
w., harmoniously confus’d 123:1
w. history 73:1
w. is governed 115:1
w. of reality 106:5
w. science 34:4
w. would be nicer 164:6
Worlds: divided and distinguished w.
27:1

Wrong: always in the w. 49:4

Yankees 154:1
Young men 141:6
Young women 123:9
Youth: corrupted the y. 136:5

Acknowledgments

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192 Acknowledgments

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John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester

World Federation of Scientific Workers, London

Miss Anne Yeats

M B Yeats

Znanie, Moscow

The Harvest of a
Quiet Eye

A Selection of Scientific Quotations